I couldn’t quite tell if your comment was meant seriously or as parody :-). In case it was serious, here’s a response:

I don’t agree, either about venture-capitalized firms or about Republicans (at least the ones I know). Other VC-funded companies have behaved scrupulously, both in labeling and managing their open source projects; there’s no reason Zimbra couldn’t do it too.

In fact, the term “open source” and the Open Source Initiative were founded partly to make free software more palatable to businesses (although there’s nothing inherently anti-business about the term “free software” either, and the Free Software Foundation is not anti-business or anti-money). Maybe the movement — and I do think it’s basically one movement, not two — is in some sense anti-establishment, for a certain definition of “establishment”, but that’s not the same as being anti-business / anti-market / anti-money.

Sure, it’s about community, among other things, but open source software also depends on corporate money, both private (VC) and publicly-traded. Much Linux kernel development is paid for by for-profit companies, acting in their own interests; OpenOffice.org is pretty much entirely funded by Sun; a ton of X Windows development is subsidized by corporations; Google both funds and releases a lot of open source software; the project I work on, Subversion, was started by and still receives significant development funding from CollabNet… Open source software would not be where it is today, nor would it be maintainable, without corporate resources. Actually, it’s been like that for a long time, it’s just that many users don’t realize it, I think.

So be anti-corporate, if you want, but don’t fool yourself: this wouldn’t be happening with purely volunteer labor. We left that world long ago.

I do run Debian GNU/Linux on my machines, by the way.

-Karl

Glad to help. I think it’s really important that people understand why this is not just some abstract issue, that these licenses are not open source in day-to-day practice as well as in theory.

(Though I have a lot of sympathy for the businesses… What they’re doing is more ascribable to wishful thinking than to malice.)

d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so.

The definition of “Appropriate Legal Notices” is higher up, but it’s basically the same thing, except you can put it in a menu item instead of in your startup screen. Which, now that I think about it, isn’t so bad, actually: the front-and-center nature is one of the main things that annoys me about the original text. So maybe I’m happy enough with the GPL v3 version.

I won’t argue that either version is as bad as the Zimbra license (or, to mention one of my pet peeves, the GFDL, which is worse in some ways than the Zimbra license), but I’m not convinced that mentioning the GPL is a neutral statement, either. (Factual, sure, but I’m not sure the Zimbra requirement isn’t factual.) Having said that, I’m having a hard time coming up with a coherent explanation of my doubts on the subject; I guess I have this feeling that the FSF is making users aware of their rights in this manner for political reasons, and that there’s a bit of FSF advertising in forcing programs to make visible the GPL; given that, “neutral” doesn’t seem like quite the right phrase to use. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with being non-neutral - I’m not neutral about quite a lot of things!

Well said! Your post saves me the trouble of writing up a similar line of explanation on my own blog. Thanks!

It’s one thing for your fork to be forced to announce that it, too, is or contains free software; that is a neutral, factual statement. It’s quite another for your fork to be forced to advertise for its competitors. Because the latter is so damaging to the credibility and viability of any fork, I think in practical terms it’s a much more severe restriction on freedom.

(I hope the GPL v3 has done away with this notification clause, though haven’t yet checked to see.)

c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

The GPL version doesn’t suffer from all of the flaws of the Zimbra license, but it’s not clear to me that some of your arguments (freedom to fork, advertising) don’t apply here too.

(That has, incidentally, never been one of my favorite parts of the GPL…)