Topic: Switch to GPL - page 3. (Read 17495 times)

Binaries compiled from open source code can potentially be confirmed by the community that the binaries are indeed related to a particular svn snapshot of source code.  I am not sure how, but I am sure this is possible to confirm.

Binaries compiled from closed source code can not be confirmed by the community that the binaries are indeed related to a particular svn snapshot of source code without modification, because the code has obviously been modified and there is no way to know what the modified code looks like.

I can't believe this, what are you arguing here? The same question, is this something about "winning an argument"? NONE of what have you written is ANY reason WHATSOEVER to use MIT over GPL. Why are you making up excuses (ridiculous at that) for the pitfalls of MIT rather than stating why would MIT be more advantageous to GPL? There is an easy answer for that, because there isn't any rational advantage to it! Is it surprising that I'm going mad here over that kind of silly things you say?

There is really simple thought process behind this to decide this question, please answer these one by one:

1) Would you personally accept closed source software dealing with your bitcoin transactions running on your station? (in that case I'm going to send you that credit card utility I told you about)
2) Would you recommend to anybody else to use closed source implementation of the bitcoin protocol? (not yours with your backdoor to make a buck I mean third-party software)
3) If you would not use closed source yourself and did not recommend to others to use such a software, what good is an option to fork existing implementation and make one?

See? Real easy .. I do not see any reason why would you want to fight a battle against GPL, why would you be against GPL? It makes no sense.

The only other option would be to *trust* the publisher of the software, in that case I would ask why use bitcoin at all? Its very design is centered about the idea of eliminating central authority that has to be trusted. You can just as well use regular dollars and *trust* the federal reserve and the US government to take care of your currency ... that turned out well, right? Do you want the same thing to happen to bitcoin?

Oh gosh, I have to calm down ... it really is hard for some people to grasp this. Please listen to yourself, you're saying that using closed source client is a bad idea, do I understand that right? And you are encouraging people to use the open-source MIT one over the closed source one, right? That means people should really use only the open-source version to not get screwed ... what. is. the. point. of. the. MIT. license. then!? The MIT license is specifically designed to allow for closed source derivatives! If you're saying that people should only use open-source one without the risk of getting "what they deserve" if they don't ... you are in total agreement with me and you are making the exact same argument for using GPL as I am. Why do you feel the need to make excuses for MIT license then? Do you not like me personally that you just have to disagree with me for some reason? Or is this some ego thing about "winning an argument" or something? I honestly do not understand why people do this, it's frustrating. You may not like me, you may not like my style, you may enjoy arguing or whatever but I beg you to leave that behind and look at the facts and logic instead, please!


Ok, one by one:

1) Proprietary version doesn't mean that it will be doing only things that you'll easily notice, it can have backdoors, it can be dormant for several years and then rob a half the community at some point effectively destroying bitcoin (but still making a huge profit for whoever has done this)

2) Yes, there is a possibility that someone will develop a client from scratch, is there any reason you can think of that we should make that possibility much higher by making it easy to do? I love this logic, let's all put wallets on our front porch ... they could just taken them by stealing them in a crowded bus anyway, so what's the harm.

All you've written are excuses to do nothing ... not reasons to have MIT license, you did not say why MIT would be preferable to GPL, you just made excuses for the additional and unnecessary pitfalls of MIT. There is no reason to keep these pitfalls if there are no benefits that outweigh them. I see no benefits to MIT, only unnecessary dangers. The only supposed "benefit" is the possibility of closed sourced forks which you yourself said are dangerous and discouraged. So I really do not see why would you have any rational reason to disagree with me.

Binaries may contain suspect code regardless of the license.  Yet 999 out of 1000 users prefer binaries, because they are not programmers and would have no clue what to do with source code in their hands.

The source (ie. download origin, and PGP signer) of the software is always far more paramount, if you are worrying about bitcoin theft and other abuse.



BSD OS's handle tons of financial transactions.  Wall Street loves Linux, but it's got plenty of BSD in there too.

yeah, it's not surprising at all ... that's why MIT should not be considered in a first place, exactly because it allows this kind of abuse. The question is not whether it is surprising but whether it is desirable, wouldn't you say? If any kind of proprietary software stemming from this would get popular, it's not going to be surprising at all when a hell of a lot of people will get robbed of all their bitcoins ... that doesn't mean we should allow it, does it? I said people are just confused ... talking about whether it is "surprising" the the license allows for obvious abuse rather than talking about eliminating that abuse. Do you support that kind of "obvious consequence" then? It seem to me that you're arguing in its favor.


X11 or BSD are not small client programs that handle your freaking financial transactions, I bet you would be all happy to accept this program I made, it makes credit card transactions a lot easier, you just type in your credit card information into it ... it's real convenient, shall I send it to you? I'm sure you wouldn't have any problem with that, would ya?


It's hard to believe that such an intelligent person would make such comments you just did then ... I'm startled.

Then those users get what they deserve for using a closed source version, while a reliable open source/MIT version would still be available. If the closed source version is eating their bitcoins they will abandon it soon. There is even the possibility that some person develops a closed source version from scratch and does the same, no MIT/GPL/other license of the current bitcoin client is going to change anything on that.

That's one obvious consequence of MIT licensing, and has been going on for decades.  I doubt it is a surprise to satoshi, or anyone else.

Either MIT or GPL, both licenses are fine.  MIT has been working great for *BSD and X11; there's no reason why MIT would be problematic for bitcoin.  GPLv3 adds some helpful patent language, that's about it.  Bitcoin's patent problems are in the area of linked libraries (openssl's EC-DSA), not with bitcoin itself, so that does not seem like a large concern here.

Speaking only for myself, as a programmer who has created or worked on dozens of GPL'd projects, including some of the largest in the world (kernel, gcc).

That's exactly the point! I get the impression that many people commenting do not understand the issues involved quiet well enough and get confused a little ... no offense

So I would like to hear a response to that question too ... are you going to support and condone someone taking the code, adding a little eye-candy and little nice features perhaps and distributing this proprietary closed-sourced client to the bitcoin community? As you seem to be actually encouraging that by releasing the code under MIT license.

How are you going to check if there isn't any "bonus" to that eye-candy in the form of a backdoor, if it does follow the protocol correctly, if it doesn't at some point in time just transfer all the bitcoins from everyone to some hardcoded address? Is there any reliable way or are we just supposed to *trust* the publisher?

Why all the trouble to develop a decentralized system with specific goal of eliminating the need for central authority to trust when you then allow this exact thing to be reintroduced in the form of trusting the publisher of your software?

For those who would trade their principles for wider adoption ... I would rather want smaller community of a system I can rely on than a big one that is compromised. As far as I'm concerned, the corporations and "businesses" that won't respect the principles of transparency and openness can stick it! They're going to corrupt it and destroy anyway if they are allowed any larger influence. Did it not occur to you that there is a reason some corporations won't touch GPL? They can not cheat and rip people off with that kind of software ... that translates into lower profits. I don't know about you but I certainly wouldn't miss that kind of "company" ... That's like asking Microsoft to help popularize your OS - they are going to screw you over the first chance they get, it's going to get popular allright but it's going to be no longer the OS you had in mind at first.

Your argument Satochi that it creates duplication of work is a valid one ... it makes cheating and compromising the bitcoin community a hell of a lot easier for anyone who wishes to do so. But I did not realize that was the kind of duplicity we were worried about.

I would like to hear any reasonable scenario where distribution of a proprietary bitcoin software would be acceptable, would *you* accept a proprietary implementation to run on your system? Would you recommend to anybody to use such an implementation? I'm really curious about this ... thank you.

(and sorry, I'm kind of perturbed by the responses ... if you sense any tension from my post it's from frustration that people would even consider running a black box software dealing with bitcoins, incredible!)

Syke: While I understand some of the community may not appreciate the manners in which a seemingly friendly community member has established their proprietary product, consider businesses that offer products or services for profit.  Now consider that one of those businesses or entrepreneurial individuals has established a kind of closeness within the community.  Instead of focusing negatively on their activities, they should instead be appreciated that they are nice enough to participate amongst the community directly.  From my observations, puddinpop is providing a valuable service and is handling the negative reviews/feedback as an accepted or nonevil organization/business would.

While I particularly advocate and look forward to an open source implementation, it isn't necessary to aggress on those that conform to such expectancies.  To do so establishes bad reputation for the consumer.  Consumers can be evil too. ^_^

In regards to your comment, an MIT license allows the code to be open source and for anyone and everyone to use and implement bitcoin into anything and everything, whether it is released as open source or established into a viable for-profit product.  To aid in the acceptance of Bitcoin for already-established businesses, MIT is a convenient license that will allow a business to consider Bitcoin.  If the license were GPL, then it would hinder growth/acceptance of Bitcoin throughout well-established businesses.

The particular friendly community member that is offering a product that generates profits is not a well-established business and perhaps the product isn't a kind of product you would expect to pay for, but it is a product nonetheless, and therefore, you must consider evaluating it as such and handle responding, considering and associating with the individual as you would any other business.  Blah blah blah, I'm sure you get my point.

Satoshi,

So you support people taking your code, modifying it to skim bitcoins off the miner, and then releasing the binary without releasing the modified source code?

Takeover?
Bitcoin will always be open source, because it is now licensed using the MIT license. This means you can take the code and do pretty much everything with it. Everyone can therefore grab always use and add to it. It's something SOME (I am not talking about anyone in this forum) GPL advocates forget sometimes. I did so multiple times
You can't somehow take it away.

Rearing IP. I don't know too much about it, but isn't it somehow free, because there is no patent or something similar yet? As I said I have only minimal knowledge on this topic.

If the only library is closed source, then there's a project to make an open source one.

If the only library is GPL, then there's a project to make a non-GPL one.

If the best library is MIT, Boost, new-BSD or public domain, then we can stop re-writing it.

I don't question that GPL is a good license for operating systems, especially since non-GPL code is allowed to interface with the OS.  For smaller projects, I think the fear of a closed-source takeover is overdone.

Ehh.... Macho, bitcoin IS open source. MIT license IS a open source license.
No closed source, proprietary software or DRM here.

For a software like this, *only* GPL license makes any sense. It's not about an ideology but rather anyone who would trust proprietary software for their financial transactions and a system like bitcoin is a fool and deserves what's coming for them (which is a lot of stolen "cash"). Using proprietary software may even result in hijacking of the whole bitcoin network if significant portion of people would use such a client. There is no way to reliably test for backdoors or other nasty stuff, any closed-source software should be essentially banished by the bitcoin community. GPL allows you to make private in-house modification as much as you like so that's not an issue at all. The only situation that causes GPL to trigger is when you *distribute* the software to other people, in which case you have to provide sources along with it which is the only way anyone should accept any software dealing with bitcoin anyway.

You have to also realize that there are no legal consequences to any "theft" as using bitcoin from neutral point of view is essentially just moving some arbitrary bits around. So the bitcoin community is expected to self-regulate, which should come in a form of an enforced transparency (by all the users rejecting anything else). Considering any other license than GPL-like is playing with fire and is not going to end well.

I did not realize current bitcoin client was released under MIT license,

This should be changed to GPL IMMEDIATELY!

GPLv3 even protects you from said software to be locked up by DRM so even when it's open-source you would not have access to it. There is no disadvantage to using GPL license really. Anyone spreading FUD about GPL is either not appropriately informed/did not consider all the issues or has an ulterior motive as far as I'm concerned. I'm not going to trust any closed-source, that's for sure ... and if significant portion of the bitcoin community is, then I'm going to sell off all my bitcoins and get out as that's a prescription for disaster, sooner or later.

As much as adoption is concerned, I'm not interested in people who feel the need to keep the source closed and hidden from its users to "adopt" anything as I would hope anyone concerned about the success and reliability of the bitcoin network wouldn't either. To complain about weak adoption in that sphere is like complaining about weak adoption by criminals to me. If someone is honest, they should feel no interest in keeping the source closed ... and every sane person would accept ONLY open-sourced software anyway. It's a win-win situation

Of course those anarcho-capitalits among us who do not recognize "copyright" as natural because it is an attempt to limit what someone else can do with their knowledge and information is not "scarce" as each new copy does not diminish the original owners property.  So you cannot copyright code any more than music or anything else.  Once you share an idea with someone else it is in their head and there is no taking it back nor telling them what they can do.  Copyright does not exist without the state and is ARBITRARY in its duration. 

Conclusion, copyright and licenses only matter to statists.  It is a "monopoly" that is maintained by force vs free competition.   

If you want a "competitive advantage" never release the code.   If you release the code, you have no right to use force to prevent others from using, distributing, or creating derivative works from it.

The GPL is the same as any other commercial license.  Any company can license a GPL'd software just the same as they would license any other software: by contacting the developer and arranging for a commercial license.

The GPL just adds the EXTRA benefit that you can also use it for free, as long as your code is ALSO open source.

So any company that has a problem with GPL, must have a problem with ALL commercial licenses as well, and thus they are stuck using ONLY software under the MIT or Apache license. Presumably such a company doesn't run Mac or Windows in-house.

I dont have any problem with MIT license, but there are a lot of companies that are using and developing GPL software. Saying that companies dont like GPL is not true.

Unless he already sold them.

While I agree that reverse engineering is always a possibility, protocols can be licensed under different Intellectual Property regulations, that may or may not include licenses (see patents...)

Protocols are IMHO not licensable anyway.

If you do clean room reverse engineering, you could make a compatible interface to a protocol and would not have to agree with any license.