The Quest for Useful 'Free' Code

Software & Operating Systems Open Source & Web-Based
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Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, that’s been bothering me:

There’s a very strong narrative out there that strong OSS licensing is essential to the world’s software ecosystem, but I can’t for the life of me find an example where this is the case.

By “strong OSS licensing,” I mean a copyleft license with additional protections, like the GPL or AGPL 3.0. The LGPL is considered an ‘in-between’ because it allows linking. Many consider it Permissive OSS.

It seems like, to do anything useful, especially if your business or livelihood depends on it, you need to run permissive OSS or proprietary code that don’t have equivalents in the FSF world.

So my question is, what examples are there, if any, of irreplaceable GPL or AGPL3 code out there?

The GCC might be a good example, except that it can be replaced by Clang and the code it produces has no licensing requirements.

The best Creative software example I can find is Blender, but the problem with that is, all of its modern core functionality is licensed under permissive OSS (cycles and python script addons) and only the prepackaged binaries are GPL.

The Linux Kernel Is pretty much the reason the LGPL exists, and wouldn’t be as widely used as it is today without adoption of GPL compatible permissive licensing.

It’s easy to find irreplaceable or incredibly useful permissively licensed software (Apache , CUPS, ZFS, .NET, Pretty much every JS framework and library including node, android, OSX, iOS, xorg, AMDGPU, OpenCL, Python, firefox , bitcoin, qt (dual license) RPC, golang, rust, opengl, vulkan, chromium/chrome, open/libressl, openvpn) but not the other way around. So why is this narrative so strong?

I’d love to hear the thoughts of the community on the matter, and examples of essential or at least competitive GPL or AGPL3 Software.

Edited for clarity, moved linux to it’s own explanation

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dunno how much i would attribute it to a communism like level of propaganda surrounding gnu or whatever, but the whole copy left bit, seems like a double edged sword in my opinion, if there is other software which is viable but under say a mit or bsd license for a company that would give them more flexibility which might be a contributing factor to companies like apple, or google.

in some case of say distros going strictly gnu can detract from the overall ‘package’ as it were example: deban, versus other debian based distros, like ubuntu, its generally easier to use ubuntu because they allow, and include by default non free drivers/firmware if any of those are required it may be a more obvious choice.

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I’m not interested in the source of the narrative as much as I am its effects, and evidence for or against it it.

It seems to me, within my own limited set of use cases, that there isn’t much a completely GPL system could do and that it’s probably held back open source and unix quite a bit, but I’d like to hear others’ perspectives.

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‘the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence’ i dont think i would say the phrase wholly applies, but maybe it’ll take the next generation, but isnt exactly a new concept, so i would probably lean towards, that it being gnu, or copy left, or whatever license, probably doesnt play as large of a role as some would like to think as far as the quality of the software, how useful or reliable it actually is

my supporting evidence would be, the amount of time that has lapsed since 1983, in that younger systems such as linux are vastly more usable. i.e. there is software we can see which is not gnu, which is viable and in use. not to say that gnu cant be viable in itself, it just hasn’t achieved the same growth rate in the least

which leads to my inevitable tentative hypothesis that maybe gnu as a concept, is actually in practice less viable

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In terms of stuff that is essential that use GPL3 or FLOSS, I cannot think of any or find any in the wild since most of it is probably run internally for governments. We would need a gov person to give concrete examples which he may not be liable to provide. Also doubt anyone like that is apart of this forum.

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Linux is GPL licensed. Whether the GPL was necessary for its success is impossible to prove after the fact, but it’s certainly plausible that companies like Oracle would have developed their own versions of the kernel for their Operating Systems instead of contributing.

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the GPL2 said that if you made fixes you were ‘required’ to submit the fixes back into upstream. That helped push linux kernel along and gain momentum.

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pretty sure he is talking about GPL 3

The whole topic is flawed because of this sentence

Well there are none just like with proprietary software … there is nothing irreplaceable.

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This fits version two of the GPL as well. Moreover blender, which the OP used as example, is licensed under GPL2+

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You may be right I was going by this

which at least in my language implies that he is speaking of GPL v3 and AGPL v3. But English is not my native language so you are probably right.

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Blender without Cycles and python scripting is utterly useless:

Again, I mentioned this. Blender itself is GPL, but the useful core functionality is all Apache/Python licensed.

I should have been more clear. Linux is pretty much the reason the lgpl exists, I did not mean linux was LGPL licensed. Also, Oracle already had It’s own unix, and companies like netflix, apple, sony and others contribute code to the BSD projects every day.

This isn’t the topic of discussion, and Yes, I meant all full gpl licensing.

Why would a government license its own internal code under the GPL? This makes absolutely no sense.

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Support.

Support of their inhouse stuff that guarantees that they won’t be “forgotten” when support contracts dry up.

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if it’s internal code how does this help support? no one’s gonna see it. They’re the government, they can just show the code to whoever they want. You picked the one example where the GPL wouldn’t be an assurance.

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Support contracts but they keep the source closed. Happens all the time. Where I work this is the case. And we’ve got shit running on old systems that don’t exists, custom made hardware and software that no one anywhere supports. when it goes titsup we’re sunk.

It it was under a GPL and we had the code, we would not be in this scenario.

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Interesting, but it hardly fits “in the wild”

also Closed source GPL? I thought that only worked with web services

Is this a hypothetical?

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Forgive me if I’m im wrong; but doesn’t the point of GPL mean the code is libre not necessarily open source?

Kinda tired rn; I may not be up to the task of a proper debate.

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@tkoham maybe this is the wrong place to ask this question?

Think /r/linux would yield more results?

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If you distribute the software under most terms, the source code must be available, even if it isn’t distributed by you. The exception is if you use the code for a web-based service where you don’t provide the software, which is why the AGPL was invented.

I’m asking here because I think the general quality of discourse here is much, much higher than that subreddit.

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True. But there’s really only like 30 people on hear that really communicate, and every now and then a savant comes out of the wood-work.

reddit you go for a large sample size.

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The problem is the signal to noise ratio. /r/linux is much more likely to deliver shitposting and squabbling over whether I’m a CIA fudster than anything else.

I don’t really have an agenda in posing this question, I’m genuinely curious about what the people here think, you included.