GNU GPL Commercialization

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warped_speed
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GNU GPL Commercialization

by warped_speed » Post

From the horse's mouth: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en ... AllowMoney

So basically they are saying that "free software" means the owner has the right to charge for their "property". Just like commercial, premium, non-free software. According to them, "The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software". Wow, what a load of absolute manure! And here's why:

Imagine servers existing where the players must all pay a subscription in order to have an account, due to the server's use of premium mods, that have been licensed under GNU GPL, and are thus open to commercialization as "free software". The moment someone who doesn't know the *new* meaning of "free software" (according to GNU GPL) comes along and squeals "free software means you can't charge for it!", the server owner could just say "The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software". And if the agitator presses on with it, the owner could then say "I'm not charging you for the game itself. You can go find any free server you want to play on. But if you want to have my software, you have to subscribe."

Isn't free software supposed to be free? How can we (the free software community) go from being on top of the world, to getting walked on by the world, so quickly it seems almost as if overnight? Are we going to let it happen? Or perhaps is there nothing that can be done to stop it?

It seems there is absolutely nothing that could legally be done to stop it, because it is not a violation of any law, according to the GNU GPL, to charge someone for *your* software. If someone was determined to stop it anyways, they would have to resort to violating the law, in order to attack such a server and try to have it shut down somehow, because there would be no legal recourse.

(btw, imagine charging someone for thought-forms, ideas, so-called "intellectual property"... Hogwash! If radiated energy could be claimed as property, someone would have tried to claim the Sun and charge everyone on Earth a fee just to "use" what they see as "their property"! What ridiculous nonsense!)

Any modded game server can be made premium-only, by adding nonfree GNU GPL licensed "free-software" modifications, because the players must download and install the modifications in order to play on the server, regardless of the game. They are not charging for the game itself, just their own custom modifications.

Minetest is to the Premium Mods, what Linux Kernel is to the Red Hat.

If you can prove that premium mods are illegal, then you have also just proven that Red Hat is illegal. But guess which one is easier to shut down? A few kids making mods for their game server in mom's basement, scraping by to hopefully have enough money to pay for their every-other-daily ramen bowl? Or a tight-knit bunch of highly experienced elite cyberthugs, that have already been raking in money by the truckloads for years? Legal or not, it's obvious which one will still be going a year later, as if nothing ever happened; and which one will be gone forever, to remain only as a once fond memory turned sour.

This situation (where a server offers non-free premium GNU GPL licensed "free software" modifications) is likely already occurring, "in the wild". All that remains to be seen is what will happen when the unstoppable force (people who think they're right about everything all the time no matter what) meets the immovable object (people who think they have the right to monetize everything all the time no matter what). I'm going to be busy popping popcorn for this one though. I am too busy with moving, which is what I will be doing instead of participating in this conflict. But when I'm ready to start my own server, I hope the dust has settled by then, because I don't want to have people fighting all the time about what is or is not the right way to run a server.
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Re: GNU GPL Commercialization

by rubenwardy » Post

I think the fundamental misunderstanding here is that the "free" in free software actually refers to freedom, not to price.

Also, regarding the example of servers - the GPL only applies if it runs on your computer. If you join a server with GPL mods, the code runs on the server not your computer so you are not a party to the GPL license. Therefore, server owners can keep any changes they make to GPL private. The license that would give you this right is AGPL - when you join a server with AGPL mods, they are required to give you the source code if they have made modifications
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Re: GNU GPL Commercialization

by Blockhead » Post

warped_speed wrote:
Mon May 29, 2023 18:49
From the horse's mouth: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en ... AllowMoney

So basically they are saying that "free software" means the owner has the right to charge for their "property". Just like commercial, premium, non-free software. According to them, "The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software". Wow, what a load of absolute manure! And here's why:
Yes, the software is the property of its original author(s) under copyright law. As much as you have made yourself clear that you do not like the state of the law, it is the law. Also, the Free Software Foundation's definition of Free Software must be understood to be a jargon term, given authoritatively. Again, you seem very annoyed at the FSF proclaiming this authority; but the Open Source Initiative, the other main faction in the free & open source sphere, have their own, similarly authoritatively-given "Open Source Definition". FSF vs OSI is but one of many political debates inside of software, but at least each side has their definitions and talking points in order.
warped_speed wrote:
Mon May 29, 2023 18:49
Imagine servers existing where the players must all pay a subscription in order to have an account, due to the server's use of premium mods, that have been licensed under GNU GPL, and are thus open to commercialization as "free software". The moment someone who doesn't know the *new* meaning of "free software" (according to GNU GPL) comes along and squeals "free software means you can't charge for it!", the server owner could just say "The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software". And if the agitator presses on with it, the owner could then say "I'm not charging you for the game itself. You can go find any free server you want to play on. But if you want to have my software, you have to subscribe."
You seem to not understand how Minetest works. When connecting to the server, the server transfers specific information to clients. For each mod, it transfers all of its media: textures, localisation strings and models. The server also transmits certain definitions attached to nodes, entities and so on, such as their textures (tiles definitions), descriptions, node dig prediction and many other fields. There is never any transfer of code, like the Lua code for a node's on_dig or on_dig and so on.

The sale of a copy of the software under the GPL entails a full transfer, which would make it impossible to delete the copy on the remote client's end without DRM, which the GPL forbids because it would fail to pass on the right to make further copies.

By connecting to a server, you have never received a copy of the server's mods. You have received a copy of its assets and certain definitions of nodes. It's an interesting question about what happens with the media. The media assets are received by the server operator under licence, but this licence is often not received among the files sent to the client. So unless the client can find a copy of the mod, they must assume all rights reserved, which would actually be against "ShareAlike" licences. This is more of an actual problem than anything you brang up. But I digress.

Also, what licence do you know of that prevents this in the case of Minetest? The answer is probably none, because again, software is never received by a client, only media assets and definitions. The problem is just as much true whether you choose copyleft, permissive or any kind of proprietary licence. The best licence we have is the Affero GPL, which I will discuss later, and may make this moot.
warped_speed wrote:
Mon May 29, 2023 18:49
Isn't free software supposed to be free? How can we (the free software community) go from being on top of the world, to getting walked on by the world, so quickly it seems almost as if overnight? Are we going to let it happen? Or perhaps is there nothing that can be done to stop it?
Free software is free as in "I am free to do exercise my four freedoms", not as in "free of charge". This idiosyncrasy of the English language has frustrated attempts at communication about Free Software pretty much since it began, and is why some people prefer more alien terms like "Libre Software". In German, the term "Freie Software" cannot be confused with "kostenlose Software" (unless you're a crappy search engine trying to feed people anything that's free of charge, liberty-respecting or not). The argument thereafter mostly boils down to a capitalist-communist style debate about whether people should be free to pay each other or whether everything should be provided free as a public good - and then as usual, most people take a liberal view that while there is exploitation possible by selling free software, it is not inherently immoral to sell it either.
warped_speed wrote:
Mon May 29, 2023 18:49
It seems there is absolutely nothing that could legally be done to stop it, because it is not a violation of any law, according to the GNU GPL, to charge someone for *your* software. If someone was determined to stop it anyways, they would have to resort to violating the law, in order to attack such a server and try to have it shut down somehow, because there would be no legal recourse.
You're not making it clear whether that's a line you would cross. But you seem to imply that the means may justify the ends. Let me say that I think that probably would not help your credibility. For now this issue as presented is hypothetical as best I know. Minetest's community actively works to encourage a free culture of sharing, and so while authors may be within their rights to do things, I know there would be backlash if they did act in this sort of way.
warped_speed wrote:
Mon May 29, 2023 18:49
(btw, imagine charging someone for thought-forms, ideas, so-called "intellectual property"... Hogwash! If radiated energy could be claimed as property, someone would have tried to claim the Sun and charge everyone on Earth a fee just to "use" what they see as "their property"! What ridiculous nonsense!)
When you write code for a computer program, you own that code and can licence it (or not) to anyone as you see fit. So says the Berne convention. I can see this upsets you, but try not to let it do so too much while posting here, because the Minetest forums aren't the place to petition your local political representative to reform those laws.
warped_speed wrote:
Mon May 29, 2023 18:49
Any modded game server can be made premium-only, by adding nonfree GNU GPL licensed "free-software" modifications, because the players must download and install the modifications in order to play on the server, regardless of the game. They are not charging for the game itself, just their own custom modifications.
Once again, I don't know of any licence that stops this except if you're going to go and write another one. Rubenwardy mentioned the Affero GPL, which is the best licence that we have for now. It requires any modification to the source code of the mod to be made available. If the server uses an AGPL mod unmodified, then you can get it from the original source. If the server uses a modified version of an AGPL mod and doesn't publish their modifications, well then they are actually in violation of the licence, so we have normal legal recourse, not illegal retaliation like you mentioned earlier.
warped_speed wrote:
Mon May 29, 2023 18:49
Minetest is to the Premium Mods, what Linux Kernel is to the Red Hat.

If you can prove that premium mods are illegal, then you have also just proven that Red Hat is illegal. But guess which one is easier to shut down? A few kids making mods for their game server in mom's basement, scraping by to hopefully have enough money to pay for their every-other-daily ramen bowl? Or a tight-knit bunch of highly experienced elite cyberthugs, that have already been raking in money by the truckloads for years? Legal or not, it's obvious which one will still be going a year later, as if nothing ever happened; and which one will be gone forever, to remain only as a once fond memory turned sour.
Red Hat is legal because it's not illegal to sell support contracts for an operating system that contains a few trademarked assets and hosts its own package mirrors for a stable set of software that gets security patches. Red Hat is also known to suck badly ever since the IBM acquisition, with licence-compliance people breathing down your neck, so it has seen a lot of people transitioning to alternatives like Rocky and Alma Linux. It didn't help that they killed CentOS either. But this is how FOSS projects go after a hamfisted corporate takeover: the community forks it and makes it good again. See also: OpenOffice->LibreOffice, MySQL->MariaDB. Turns out the elite cyberthugs aren't so leet apparently.

Wait a minute, are you seriously suggesting that premium modded Minetest servers are going to poison all of Minetest and cause its failures? That's pretty short sighted. For the reason I just explained above. It's all free software. People kick out tyrants they don't like. I certainly wouldn't play on a "premium mod" Minetest server, and I would urge others not to as well. It's abusive. It'd probably get delisted from the main server list - if it's a commercial venture, they don't need free advertising.

Here's another hypothetical for you since you seem to like them so much. What if someone comes along from some other place like Minecraft or just as a weekend programmer hobby, opens one of these premium servers, uses AGPL mods on their server, and sends pull requests back upstream? Are you then going to object to the fact that people paying for access to the server paid this filthy capitalist of a server owner and insist that the contribution not be accepted? Perhaps you'll say that author is "too corporate" or "this is a takeover, and they are dictating the terms", the usual kind of rhetoric levelled against Red Hat or Canonical?
warped_speed wrote:
Mon May 29, 2023 18:49
This situation (where a server offers non-free premium GNU GPL licensed "free software" modifications) is likely already occurring, "in the wild". All that remains to be seen is what will happen when the unstoppable force (people who think they're right about everything all the time no matter what) meets the immovable object (people who think they have the right to monetize everything all the time no matter what). I'm going to be busy popping popcorn for this one though. I am too busy with moving, which is what I will be doing instead of participating in this conflict. But when I'm ready to start my own server, I hope the dust has settled by then, because I don't want to have people fighting all the time about what is or is not the right way to run a server.
I don't see why you think there's going to be a huge storm of vitriol between these two hypothetical camps, or more to the point, even if it does happen, you seem to be implying you'll enjoy that. Also, do you think that somehow a conclusion will actually be reached? Some point where you can definitely say what "Minetest as a community has decided" is acceptable and not? People are individuals, uniform opinions of a loosely affiliated group like "people who play Minetest" don't exist, they're a spook.

Your comment is an enigma. You both claim that you'll be grabbing popcorn, but that you'll be too busy moving. You claim you won't participate and want the dust to settle, but it sounds like you literally came here and made your first post (assuming this isn't a sockpuppet account) in order to stir the dust up. And last of all despite that you seem to want to project seeming so aloof and detached, you then go on to say that you'll care somehow about what people think about how you run your server, when you seem to have made it clear you'll run your hypothetical server in the way you think is moral - so why worry if you think you're doing the right thing? You'll wear yourself out trying to force others to change.

If there is any problem here - which I'm not sure there is - well, all you seem interested in doing is lighting the fire. Help prove me wrong about that.
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Re: GNU GPL Commercialization

by Wuzzy » Post

The critical difference is that nobody can monopolize free software while proprietary software often is a monopoly (due to copyright). Everyone can sell the same free software, but also everyone can give it away for nothing. Note that in practice, most free software still costs nothing. This should be unsurprising. Even if a free software is being sold, it only takes one person to publish their copy for a price of 0. Compared to proprietary software, sharing it will get you in trouble.

The GPL is not a new definition of free software. That the GPL is not opposed to selling things is not new either. ALL free software licenses allow for selling. But the selling is allowed for everyone, the users included. Thus, this is NOT a secret "privilege" for the "owner" hidden in the GPL. You got it all backwards!

This was always how free software worked, right from the beginning.

Any modded game server can be made premium-only, by adding nonfree GNU GPL licensed "free-software" modifications, because the players must download and install the modifications in order to play on the server, regardless of the game. They are not charging for the game itself, just their own custom modifications.
This is completely false. Due to the nature of Minetest, mods are entirely server-side. The client only gets the media files and texts, but the logic runs on the server.

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