291–300 of 468 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blender, Krita, Wordpress, Drupal, Nextcloud and many other projects are commercial and (A)GPL. As long as you share the sources of your modifications, you are free to use their code.
All of the projects you mentioned except Nextcloud are owned and developed by non-profits.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The GPL values the user's freedom, That assumes a very specific kind of user. The kind that has the time and energy, not to mention the ability, to read and understand source code and modify it according to his needs. Basically the RMS kind of user. For most users, that freedom is not much of a concern at all. For them, the most important freedom is: the freedom to enjoy the fruits of labour of a large horde of prog…
> That assumes a very specific kind of user. The kind that has the time and energy, not to mention the ability, to read and understand source code and modify it according to his needs. Actually, no. End users also benefit when code is contributed back to the software they use.
My intent was only to help the GPL and free software fanatics see an important freedom provided by non-free platforms, not to belittle the achievements of open source community.
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…
Why is a few snippets of code so valuable anyway? We don't GPL scientific research, you expect people to cite you, and then build off your work, the licensing in a sense is far more permissive. You don't GPL maths text books and then require proofs to be licensed back. Other knowledge doesn't seem to propagate in society like this. The human element of the programmer who can understand, adapt and develop some program…
Microsoft Copilot uses billions and billions of lines of code. It charges for the service. If Microsoft had to license the code, could it build as good a service? If not, then that proves that the (trillions of) snippets have value. Microsoft only says it's valueless because it can get away with stealing it.
It's the same way water is free at the river. But that doesn't mean it has no value. Water has price tags in a supermarket.
When Google photographs billions of streets it at least provides a public service with it and a way to remove yourself.
Centuries ago, petrol was considered useless and a nuisance. Now it's very valuable because it has uses. Microsoft is trying to convince people that petrol has no value exactly because it does.
Just because every line of code is worth millionths of a penny, doesn't mean it's valueless when Microsoft will make billions of dollars off of the service.
It is not easy to conclude that that would be the case if Doom's source code was not released under the GPL. Actually, GPL has been working exactly as intended and exactly as I expected it to work.
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?…
Carmack has net worth of $50 million. Him saying "exploitation by big tech is not a problem, really" is very different than normal person saying it - his well being is not on the line and never will be. Go ask authors of ElasticSearch or Airflow or whatever the new thing that AWS steals will be.
If Microsoft took the source code to Nano and made a Nano+ that reads word files or something, closed-source, selling it for big bucks, etc, the value of what they're offering cannot possibly be more than the delta from what is freely and openly available. They didn't make the original any less available, and a user is only possibly going to pay if the features are different enough to merit the cost over the freely available version. Similarly, if Amazon has a product based on an open source product, what they charge can only possibly be for the values that they've brought to it. They haven't stolen anything.
A lot of GPL advocacy seems to be based in sour grapes and it's offputting.
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?…
Being in denial
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?…
> The best aspects of GPL work didn't manifest That's strongly from the point of view of people who are mainly developers. But the main beneficiaries of the GPL are not developers but users : users of GPL software have the right to view and modify the code that runs on their computers. On the contrary, users of BSD-licensed software may have had this right stripped by middlemen between the author of the software and…
I can play Doom on a modern, underpowered machine for today standards, with many improvements to graphics, sound and gameplay thanks to the need that all these improvements had to be contributed back. I can even pay for original assets of the game. It is not easy to conclude that that would be the case if Doom's source code was not released under the GPL. Actually, GPL has been working exactly as intended and exactly…
Carmack said he wishes the source had been released under the BSD license instead of the GPL.
You're saying that it's not easy to conclude that new versions of Doom would exist if the sources had never been released at all.
If you're trying to troll and suggest that it's not easy to conclude variants and updates would exist if the sources had been releases under the BSD license instead of the GPL, then we all know that's completely ridiculous, so I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and suggesting you either didn't read or understand the tweet.
If you want to suggest there'd be less variants and versions? That'd be reasonable, but you're not saying that.