Amusing article about busybox

Laurent Bercot ska-dietlibc at skarnet.org
Sun Feb 5 01:34:49 UTC 2012


> Busybox is not going to change the license. (This is in fact not possible -
> anyone who ever contributed to GPLv2 licensed code has a right
> to demand that all future changes must be under GPLv2 too).
> 
> But, we are not going to be deaf - we are listening to other peoples'
> opinions and we might consider some changes to our license enforcement
> process. It would be arrogant to think that we always do everything
> in the best way possible.

 Busybox provides executables, so it's a fairly independent piece of code.
I don't think the GPL is preventing busybox from being used, at all:
busybox was made to be used as is, it doesn't need to be linked against
other stuff, and it's not a basis for derivative works.
 Every company I've worked for was OK to use busybox, despite *all* of them
being totally paranoid about their IP and impervious to the idea of sharing
a single line of their proprietary code. It doesn't cost anything to give a
link to the unchanged busybox source, and it doesn't challenge their
sacrosaint IP. GPL is basically a perfect license for a tool such as
busybox.

 However, busybox is in a rather privileged place, because it practically
never has to be patched by end users. When companies need to patch open
source code to make it suit their peculiar needs, or when they need to link
against some library, that's when licensing issues arise, and that's when
companies will reject copylefted software. Unfortunately, that happens very
often: I'd say about 80% of the open source software I'm using for
professional products has to be patched sooner or later to accommodate
the product's needs. Yes, the main reason for this huge ratio is that
proprietary software authors don't know what Unix modularity is, and
can't make their shit properly communicate with other software via Unix
IPCs; nevertheless, I have to adapt and do what I can, and that often
means patching existing open source software.

 (My own, hubris-based philosophy on this is: I'd rather have the end
users of the product be happy with a good product, so I'd rather have
companies use MY software rather than a crappy alternative, even if they
don't give any source code back to the community; and since I'm the
author, if they need support, they can hire ME, and give something back
to ME. That's why I use permissive licenses for my software: I care more
about the quality of the product for the end user than about the spreading
of free software. But it's a personal choice and I'm not advocating it
for anyone else.)

 Of course, all of this has nothing to do with the question of license
enforcement whatsoever. Copyleft infringement should be fought, of course,
at least as hard as copyright infringement is.

-- 
 Laurent


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