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List:       gphoto-devel
Subject:    [gphoto-devel] Re: gPhoto2 licensing clarification (was Re: Introduction and Comments)
From:       Richard Stallman <rms () santafe ! edu>
Date:       2000-08-23 10:52:13
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    > This opens the danger of non-free camera drivers, which could be a
    > perennial problem, like the problem of non-free device drivers in
    > Linux.  By allowing them we would impose on ourselves a never-ending
    > effort to obtain free drivers for all cameras, in effect the effort of
    > persuading each company to allow a free driver.

    This is solved by the fact that the companies have the option of
    "sponsoring" a developer to do the development and maintainence at
    no-cost to the company.

This might perhaps influence their decision, but we cannot rely on it
to win them over.  The company may prefer keep the hardware interface
secret and distribute only a binary driver.  We have seen this happen
over and over with drivers for Linux and with proprietary X servers.

If that happens, we need a much bigger lever than the possibility of
saving the salary of a driver maintainer.  That amount of money is
probably not big enough to make enough difference.

    When we contacted Vision to request it, they said it was a trade secret
    and will never be released. So, Vision-derived camera users will need to
    stick with grayscale images. They protected their algorithm even on a
    little toy camera!

Exactly--that is the problem situation.

We have one way to put pressure on them: by preventing gPhoto from
supporting their cameras.  The strength of this pressure will increase
year by year, along with the popularity of GNU/Linux.

But if gPhoto allows non-free drivers, that punctures the pipe that
has to deliver the pressure.  They will write a non-free driver, and
tell the public that "our camera does work with gPhoto; just install
this driver!"  Presto, very little pressure falls on them.

This market pressure won't win every battle, but it will win some.  We
should not fail to use it.

    I'm sorry, but I can't let this analogy go by without comment. I am a
    recent (1.5 years) college graduate and made several very good friends
    who have gone on to work for companies who produce commercial software
    both as developers and as management.

We have nothing against commercial software (software developed by
business) as long as it is free commercial software.  The problem is
non-free software, software that denies the users freedom.  Non-free
software a social problem, and the GNU Project exists to solve it.
So I think that's a good analogy.

But that is a digression, because the purpose of my analogy had
nothing to do with that.  It is a point of strategy.  We can defend
our community's freedom at one point, easily, by using a license that
prohibits non-free drivers.  If we don't defend there, we will be
faced with a much harder job, trying to replace each non-free driver
with a free one, while all the time the non-free drivers are tempting
people to accept non-free software on their machines.

    > What happens on OS/2 is a secondary issue for a GNU program. 

    Well, my motivation, in the end, is to make their computer work. I want
    to make people's lives easier, even in the smallest ways.

The GNU Project's goal is to make it easier to use computers in
freedom.  This has a lot in common with your motivation but they are
not identical.  Probably 95% of our work is writing free software to
make computers easier to use, and that work would satisfy your
motivation too.  But if the opportunity to make computers easier to
use is based on trading away our freedom, then we say no.

If you could find an interest in working on a project which falls in
that 95%, none of these problems would arise.

If we make the GNU system easier to use but we do not make OS/2 easier
to use, that is fine--it gives people impetus to switch to GNU.
Popularity is not our ultimate goal, but we do want to make GNU more
popular.  And people who switch will gain freedom, since GNU is free
and OS/2 is not.

So if it is a question of sacrificing some defense of our freedom to
make an OS/2 system easier to operate, that is not a good trade-off.

    > But what he wants to do is probably actually permitted by the GPL.  If
    > these libraries are distributed with the OS/2 kernel or with the OS/2
    > compiler, then the GPL actually permits linking with them (because of
    > the "system library" exception, although "system library" are not the
    > actual words used in the GPL).

    Nope. this is the actual GUI toolkit used standard on OS/2. Not
    considered a system library.

We informally call it the "system library" exception, but the GPL does
not actually use the words "system library".  So we need to look at
the precise facts here to see whether this library qualifies for the
exception.  Is it distributed with the OS/2 kernel?  Is it distributed
with the OS/2 compiler?

Meanwhile, is it possible to run gPhoto on OS/2 using GTK?  It ought
to be possible at least in principle.  I don't know whether GTK
supports OS/2, but it supports Windows, and OS/2 should be easier than
Windows.

    > The mixture of free and non-free
    > software is exactly what we are trying to *prevent*.

    Then why the "system library" clause? 

I wrote the "system library" clause so it would be possible to compile
GNU programs for non-free systems.  Every program has to be linked
with libc, and on those systems, libc is non-free.

However, allowing the use of any arbitrary library would
be too big a loophole.

    This seems somewhat contradictory to me. To advocate not mixing free and
    non-free software, but at the same time providing licenses that don't
    hold true to the said statement.

It's not a contradiction, it's a trade-off between subgoals, always
aiming to do the best possible to spread freedom.

In general we try to prevent mixing free and non-free software,
because the effect of such mixing is to privatize the free software.
In the particular case of non-free "system libraries", it seems like
better strategy to permit the linking, so that GNU packages can run on
non-free systems.

Are you arguing against the "system library" exception is a mistake?

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