161–170 of 468 posts
Let’s face it: the GPL is becoming irrelevant and is displaced by permissive licenses. Projects using the GPL are increasingly held back and are losing favour among developers. Like LLVM is a very active and innovative platform, whereas GCC is essentially stuck in its original scope. Why? Because the world is more complicated than the FSF ideologues want it to be. Developers do not collectively or exclusively want to…
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Yes, especially if the code not being GPL means the bad actor can create a product which then makes your code useless, or worse, evil (via a monopoly, bundled telemetry, or otherwise)
Can you show a scenario demonstrating how GPL prevents this from happening?
For example, Oracle tried to outcompete RedHat by cloning the RedHat Linux into Oracle Unbreakable Linux.
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> the GPL is becoming irrelevant and is displaced by permissive licenses Is it really? I've recently switched to AGPL because I specifically don't want you using my stuff if you aren't going to give back. If you want to make money off something, feel free to pay for the initial investment, instead of using my work for free. > Developers do not collectively or exclusively want to work for free and live a life of pover…
You’re basically using the AGPL like a “freemium” upselling business model. I’ve got no issues with that, it’s your property after all. Just don’t tell the world that you sign up to the FSF nonsense about software freedom. And be prepared that this may not work out for you. The AGPL is particularly nasty and even infects across network boundaries (not tested in court though). No one with a sane state of mind will eve…
...because I want everyone to be able to use my software for free, except if they're going to get paid for my work? Cool.
> "but tons of opportunities to just copy-paste-modify were lost due to license concerns". Well, that's the point. GPL is working as intented.
Seeing as that scenario didn't come to pass, the only result is a net loss of games that could have been made (or made cheaper) by reusing Carmack's code and instead weren't. Maybe some of these games would have been proprietary, but it's still a net loss that they weren't made at all.
I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Tho…
I am not sure which GPL advocates you have spoken to, but I like the GPL, because it puts me center as a user. I can use and copy a programm as I see fit. And if I come to a point where I think something has gone wrong with it or something is missing, then I can modify it myself, or pay someone to help me do that, and I can distribute these modifications.
This ensures my freedom as a user. Maybe the software got abandoned, maybe someone added telemetry, maybe xyz, it's helpful in many cases.
More restrictive licenses, let's say the MIT one, do not prevent me from making making my contributions closed source. This ensures the freedom of the developer to prevent users gaining access to the code. Thus it restricts the rights of the user, that they would have under the GPL.
If a commercial project feels it's within their right to prevent me from accessing the code that is running on my machine, that is their decision, but that is at odds with the freedoms that are granted by the GPL.
Given all that, I would like to disagree with your conclusion
> But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests.
Chosing the GPL means it's more important to me that my users, not my code, is not exploited "by corporations".
The GPL then does not prevent "good people with commercial interests" from using my code - but given that "good" is a relative term: from my point of view preventing someone from having meaningfull access to the code that is running on their machine is not good - it is bad.
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You will see my opinions are mostly commercial, however it was GPL and its religious movement (against the man, 70's style) that gave us Linux and GCC. Most likely Windows and UNIX clones would have kept taking their pieces out of BSD, after the 386BSD lawsuit was settled without any other alternatives to reach out for. You can see this from how much Playstation OS gets upstreamed into FreeBSD.
Compared to how much PlayStation OS gets upstreamed into Linux? If you don’t want to upstream, you won’t; if you want, you will. GPL doesn’t force anyone to give back, it merely prevents one from using your project if they don’t.
If you want to talk GNU/Linux, then we can switch to Android and ChromeOS, which have indeed done several contributions, in fact many of those left out weren't accepted.
> "but tons of opportunities to just copy-paste-modify were lost due to license concerns". Well, that's the point. GPL is working as intented.
It doesn't solve the issue. GPL people would have taken the BSD code, do a minor change, and force everyone to redistribute the source-code under GPL. Really terrible license.
I dislike people calling the GPL "viral". The thing that is viral is copyright. Copyright is baked into law and nobody can escape it. If you relinquish your own copyright then as soon as someone modifies the work copyright comes back. Copyleft is the only antidote we have for copyright. All Stallman et al really want is to "switch off" copyright. That would be obvious if people would listen to his talks. But instead…
Erm, but it is GPL that’s being viral. Not copyright, and also not other Open Source licenses - just GPL. That’s why you won’t get a license incompatibility problem without GPL in the mix.
I think, like many people, you consider copyright to be like some unquestionable right. But it's not. It was invented about 400 years ago and it's way out of date. We can and should question it. If you can't think about copyright, you won't understand copyleft.
I'm very frustrated by some of the answers here and on Twitter. Carmack says: > The GPL virality wound up being a net negative, and more value would have come from BSD. [...] The best aspects of GPL work didn't manifest, but tons of opportunities to just copy-paste-modify were lost due to license concerns. One of the answers on Twitter: > Then what if it's being exploited by big techs and make your work proprietary?…
A bit generic, though.
Let’s face it: the GPL is becoming irrelevant and is displaced by permissive licenses. Projects using the GPL are increasingly held back and are losing favour among developers. Like LLVM is a very active and innovative platform, whereas GCC is essentially stuck in its original scope. Why? Because the world is more complicated than the FSF ideologues want it to be. Developers do not collectively or exclusively want to…
> the GPL is becoming irrelevant and is displaced by permissive licenses Is it really? I've recently switched to AGPL because I specifically don't want you using my stuff if you aren't going to give back. If you want to make money off something, feel free to pay for the initial investment, instead of using my work for free. > Developers do not collectively or exclusively want to work for free and live a life of pover…