[Asterisk-Users] Re: Advice on OS Choice

[Joe Greco]

> Joe Greco [jgreco at ns.sol.net] wrote:
> > Have you ever written code for something like a medical monitor?  For
> > numerous reasons, you don't want that code available to the public.  You
> > don't need some not-smart-enough hospital techie trying to make changes
> > to it, figuring out how to override the safeguards and then installing it
> > on your equipment, and then suddenly having liability issues.
>
> Making the code available and allowing unqualified people to tinker
> with live medical equipment are two separate issues.  You're getting
> confused now.

I don't know.  I've been in a position where it's been a concern.  Have
you? 

For such a device, making the code available allows what had formerly been 
a big black box to be tampered with a heck of a lot more easily.

This isn't a problem for things like the Linksys router which someone has
loaded Asterisk onto.  Wonderful.  Kudos.  It probably voids the warranty,
but doesn't have any real unexpected consequences.

However, the electronics shop staff at many larger hospital facilities are
sharp cookies.  The possibilities for "well let's just do..." are quite
extensive.  These people are not automatically qualified to go changing
the code on these devices just because they've got it and they're able to
read C, but providing the code would be unnecessary temptation.  They lack
the background on the hardware, and more importantly the resulting product
isn't certified, so now you have an unknown.

The obvious answer is: don't distribute the source, which is merely an
attractive nuisance.

You may be a bit confused if you've never had to deal with such issues.
I assure you that I am not confused, as I have dealt with them.

> > That doesn't mean that during the course of coding that project, that you
> > run across a nice high performance GPL'd line drawing algorithm, which is
> > perfect except that it doesn't draw antialiased lines, and while you would
> > have no problem writing and returning the antialiased line code back to
> > that project, you don't want your entire product becoming subject to the
> > GPL. 
>
> If you don't like the terms of the license chosen by the author(s) of
> another project then write your own code.  If you want to take some
> GPLed code and don't want to release your project as open source, under
> the GPL, then write your own code.  I don't see the problem.

That's what we did.  Along the way, where we could have made some
significant contributions to several GPL'd projects, we *didn't*,
because we were busy writing our own code.

That's a loss for those projects, because they could have received
something along the lines of a man-year worth of development effort
towards improvements that would have been contributed back.  That's
an immense amount of benefit to an open source effort.  Instead, we
spent maybe twice that hammering on things from a new direction.  No 
benefit to the open source community at all.

In that situation, everyone loses.  Especially the GPL'd project(s).

> > That's (close to) real world.  In reality, we had a somewhat larger
> > example (plus some other miscellaneous examples) of something that would
> > have been nice to use, and which would have benefitted from returned
> > changes, had they not been licensed under GPL.  We did, in fact, make
> > great use of X11, contributed various code fixes and other things back
> > to that project, though the driver I wrote for the propietary touchscreen
> > stuff was not sent back to MIT...  what would the point have been?
> 
> If you haven't realised the point of open source software and software
> freedom by now then I can't really see the benefit in explaining it to
> you again.  Perhaps you should apply for a job at Microsoft or Apple.

Sorry, I don't believe in "software freedom".  It's a ridiculous concept,
at least up until the technology is sentient, wakes up, and says "I desire
freedom."  We don't extend the right of freedom even to other living
creatures.  We don't extend the right of freedom to our cars, our computers,
or our cell phones.  Let's be real.

I do believe in allowing people the freedom to receive source, modify it,
and distribute it, all at their option.  That's free software.  The GPL
restricts one of those freedoms, and as such, is less free than something
like the BSD license.

The law extends no freedoms to inanimate objects.  Those are reserved for
people.  Talking about "software freedom" is essentially playing a semantic
game to say "we believe that people should be restricted in what they are
allowed to do with this software."  I find this to be a repugnant use of
the word "freedom".

> > > At least the GPL would have
> > > protected the project from an even worse situation - wholesale code
> > > theft and lock-up.
> > >
> > Theft?  Lock-up?  No.  That's what happens when someone actually breaks a
> > license.
>
> Exactly.  The BSD would allow this sort of thing to continue legally.
> The GPL would not, and purposefully prevents open source software from
> being closed.

Huh?  No.  The BSD license does not allow that sort of thing.

The instant someone applies the BSD license to a bit of code and someone
else accepts it, it becomes a gift.  When you give someone a gift, they
are not stealing it from you.  By definition.

Giving away code under the GPL could be construed as a gift as well, but
it is more like "Indian giver" (apologies to Indians everywhere) in that
the giver has attached strings to it.  I don't know about you, but when
I give out gifts at Christmas, I don't say "oh and if you improve this
then you have to give it back to me" (or something like that).

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.