Free Software

Linux Kernel, Modules and Plugins

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Here are some views expressed by Linus Torvalds about the Linux kernel, plugins and how he thinks about derivative work. Very relevant to what I said about plugin interfaces and user space.

So, do themes and plugins serve a system-level or a user-level function?

p.s. Some have compared WordPress plugin and theme API to the way Linux loads kernel modules, when in fact relating it to system call interface (SCI) would be more appropriate.

GPL Sockets

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It is interesting how thinking and understanding of ideas change over time. This morning I woke up and started reading the GPL licence with the intent to take another look at what it actually stands for.

I have come to conclusion that its purpose is to give everyone the freedom to do whatever they want with my work as long as they retain the freedom to derive from it.

With every software there are only two things one can do with it — either run it or modify it. By applying the GPL licence to my original work I am making sure that these two things can always happen and nobody can take those freedoms away. Read more »

The Magic of Software (Licensing)

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Henry Birdseye: “Is it getting to the point where the software is going to cost as much as the machine?”

Unknown: “I think it will get to that, yes.”

Birdseye: “So, if something like that can cost so much. Why not just make your copy?”

Bill Gates: “If you don’t get a legitimate copy, you won’t be… came aware of the improvements, and… overall the impact that type of ripoff is going to have is that people won’t write quality packages.”

Unknown: “It takes time to write software. We haven’t found any way to really reduce that time. It takes time to define the problem. It takes time to write the software.”

Henry Birdseye: “But increasingly, as you begin to (medal?) with the prepackaged things and get a little experience, you just can’t resist the temptation to do some of your own programming. And people are gonna be doing that.”

Bill Gates: “There’s a lot of people who are forcasting that there’ll be software stores just like there are record stores today and that there’ll be thousands and thousands of those, and I think I have to agree with that.”

And yet, 86-DOS — the operating system which Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Paul Allen pitched and later licensed to IBM — was actually written by Tim Paterson and called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System). Read more »

The Pricey GPL Thought Experiment

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Let’s create the most expensive GPL licensed WordPress plugin and call it the Pricey GPL. It is offered as a free download from WordPress.org and by default it displays a random paragraph from the most downloaded book at Project Gutenberg in the WordPress dashboard. Of course, there is a widget available, too.

However, to enjoy the real value of the Pricey GPL, you have to purchase a monthly subscription to the PriceyGPL.com service (an API key) which displays a random paragraph from one of the GPL licenses. Read more »