(Context: I worked on Compose/MongoHQ for a very long time. We were the first to monetize MongoDB) I'm sure people will get riled up about this, but it makes sense. Building a business on an OSS database in a world of behemoth cloud providers is really hard. It's clear Google and Amazon (and maybe even Azure) are comfy taking OSS work, doing a ton of proprietary development on it, and leaving the companies who did al…
> comfy taking OSS work, doing a ton of proprietary development on it, and leaving the companies who did all the groundwork flailing in the wind Well, that's one way to put it I guess. I personally am OK with anyone taking my work and doing a ton of proprietary development on it. I wouldn't put it out there that way if I wasn't (and don't w/ my proprietary stuff). We need to stop demonizing restrictionless developmen…
I'm not sure what planet you live on, but the GPL and other various copy-left licenses have been on the slow decline for years in part due to things like SaaS negating the use of everything but the Affero GPL and the social 'implications' of using the GPL ("poisonous", "viral"), while the use of extremely liberally-licensed, "corporate-friendly" permissive licenses has skyrocketed.
You don't have to look far (I've seen it more than once) to find people submitting issues on places like GitHub to completely relicense a project, just because it was GPL. Even here, every time a piece of code with a GPL license is attached and posted, you can be certain of someone pointing this out.
There are technical factors involved (like what's the deal with JavaScript licensing), but ultimately less projects choose the GPL -- or any other "demanding" copy-left license -- than ever before, so I have no idea what you're talking about, other than a perceived persecution complex where you think people are trying to "stop you" from using their code?
Of course, the funny thing is you say we need to stop "demonizing" restrictionless development, and of all copyleft licenses, the Affero GPL actually has risen in usage. But that's not because there's a big mean group of copy-leftists making people do it through blackmail. It's because it's risen in usage in corporate-sponsored, open-core projects, precisely to disincentivize systems like large, already-rich SaaS companies sucking the money out of their core customers by requiring them to share the source code for their changes (which they are often unable to do, making it effective). Corporations that sell open source software exactly understand how this game works -- they don't want other companies directly eating away the bulk of their revenue streams by just slapping a stupid UX and some user management patches on top, and so they license their software in an appropriate manner to try to cover all bases (source available, but without already-geared-up companies eating away their direct lifelines).
You'll also notice most of the companies doing this strategy aren't already highly-powerful, highly-monied SaaS companies. They're often much smaller and starting off, trying to get their software in the hands of users, while retaining revenue leads. Highly powerful companies like Google can afford to just release everything under non-copyleft licenses like Apache or MIT. They can subsidize the development of the software through established business.
But I imagine most people on this website wouldn't see these companies as being "copy-left righteous", only "protecting their investment". Unsurprisingly, this kind of understanding doesn't seem to extend to individual developers who license their code under a copyleft licenses (who are "righteous", and have no reason to care about anything other than the most people possible using their software).
Maybe the "copy-left" righteousness you're seeing isn't a massive proliferation of copy-left licensing, but actually a result of people getting wise to the way this conversation plays out. After all, if I'm going to be accused of being righteous, I might as well use the GPL, since apparently anything less than a free-for-all isn't acceptable to a lot of people.