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I changed my license

bergie.iki.fi

121–130 of 200 posts

Re: I changed my license

#121
"Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires."

Did anyone ever claimed, open source was a way to get super rich in money?

It was always about access to source, to study, to tinker, to improve upon. We now have huge ressources of open source software to learn from - indeed a win I say.

And it is not clear at all to me, that the alternative timeline would have been any better, if FOSS and a strong copyleft would have won as developers choice and standard - I rather would expect it to be way more niche - and trillionaires would be as rich as ever.

Re: I changed my license

#122

CC BY-NC-ND is what I'm also increasingly using (for non-code), though not always, and disheartenedly. (And as commented, the non-code context is different.)

I have been releasing books under Creative Commons for 20+ years. Share alike, no modifications, no commercial reuse. I sell my books via Leanpub (my books https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson) and they can all be read free online (recommended to see if you like them), and if purchased the price can be reset to free, zero cost.

I like CC because I like my books to be read and I still make money. When people choose to pay I use that as a signal for which topics to put future effort into.

My wife has been my editor for ever, so this is a family business.

EDIT: over 20 years ago, I was what I think was Larry Lessig’s second ‘Featured Commoner’ and that was fun because they interviewed me and posted the interview in the CC web site.

Re: I changed my license

#123
post #116
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EULA != license, which is the entire point.

Licenses are contracts, just like an EULA. And if you expand the acronym EULA you will actually find that it is… a license agreement.

Yes, and the point is that in order to obtain and keep the license, you have to fulfill additional clauses that you agreed to by accepting the EULA.

If EULA is the same as a license, why would MSFT not just use a license? The intellectual contortions of the AI boosters here are stunning.

Re: I changed my license

#124
post #116
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EULA != license, which is the entire point.

Licenses are contracts, just like an EULA. And if you expand the acronym EULA you will actually find that it is… a license agreement.

And the AI swine reacted by downvoting the top comment again now that arguments for an EULA are made. Fucking fascists.

Re: I changed my license

#125

CC BY-NC-ND is what I'm also increasingly using (for non-code), though not always, and disheartenedly. (And as commented, the non-code context is different.)

NC is a huge pain as it can be difficult to define commercial use, and it's often defined differently in different countries. https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC https://www.techdirt.com/2014/03/27/german-court-says-creati...

And NC doesn’t always work.

I use no commercial reuse (NC) yet years ago a polite young man from China emailed me letting me know that he was translating my stuff to resell under his name for money. To be honest, I didn’t mind and it made a good story to tell friends and family.

Re: I changed my license

#126

For FOSS I personally prefer Apache 2.0 license, as 10 years from now I have no idea what people will need for their projects. Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work. Just don't redirect commercial support tickets onto community projects, or get neglected customers to contact authors. The way I see it... is symbiotic commercial relationships are important, as people can get…

>Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work Copyleft doesn't say that they can't, it says they have to make their changes available

Which could make the business untenable. I'm not GP commenter, but I do want to be useful to these too.

And as others have said the deceptive term of "plugging the SaaS loophole" ignores that it means most software cannot be combined with it. Most. By far most.

Sure, some people will say "well fuck that software". And that's a stance. But it ain't freedom.

Re: I changed my license

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right but the GPL explicitly allows commercial use, which isn't what the original comment was about ("use in production requires a fee"); i agree with the previous comment that such a license is hard to assess for a hobbyist, but the GPL is not such a license (hence yes it's simple enough)

Even though it's technically allowed, a lot of companies are afraid of it. Not GPL2 - that's used a lot, because tivoization lets them ignore the spirit of it. But they fear GPL3 and AGPL. You can also just do a crayon license. "All rights reserved, noncommercial use allowed." Nobody's stopping you. If and when Debian wants to ship your package, ask them for proper legal advice about changing it, they have lawyers.

I'm not sure there's a lot of fear of GPLv3 out there. Linus just didn't want to adopt it for Linux.

AGPL is a different matter because companies are unsure of the boundaries between their own proprietary code and any AGPL code they're using.

Re: I changed my license

#128
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The causality is wrong here. You chose to work for free with no reward, and _then_ companies found your work and used it. Presumably you started out working for free because it was intrinsically rewarding (otherwise: stop doing work you hate for free?).

I chose to do it for free to help other people. And picking a MIT license does the opposite.

Huh? You release code so that people will have to rewrite it?

I really don't understand what your goal would be in releasing code at all, then.

Re: I changed my license

#129
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the EUPL itself says that derivative works may be distributed under the LGPL instead, as long as those works are derived from both a EUPL and LGPL parent. This seems kinda trivial to abuse and the author should have noticed this clause if that was their main concern.

The EUPL obligations still apply, unless they specifically conflict with the other license. There is some dispute on how exactly that is to be interpreted, but hopefully it will be clarified in version 1.3: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/di... A “conflict” here is intended to mean that following some EUPL obligation (such as publishing the derived source code) wouldn’t be allowed under the…

I don't understand how that's supposed to work - then you can't distribute under the compatible license; only under a weird hybrid of that license and non-conflicting EUPL terms. Seems to defeat the purpose of the compatibility clause?

Re: I changed my license

#130
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work It's an idea as old as any: The freedom to restrict the freedom of others, is it really a freedom? It is a tiresome debate. People can argue about it until the sun sets without reaching an agreement. Better to be clear about which kind of freedom you mean, and respect the choice of others. Plenty of businesses have been started around free softw…

Philosophically, I see it as forced charity is no longer a true charity paradox. Or, a copyright troll is functionally indifferent from a copyleft troll. It is important to keep the path clear for kids to build their own success stories. =3

Philosophically I see it as forced don't-murder is no longer true don't-murder.

Why does it have to be forced? Why can't murder just be legal and if you want to murder that's fine and if you don't, that's fine too...

It was not forced charity from the original author. They were free to choose any license. The original author is the only one in the position to choose to be charitable or not. No one else's opinion on charity matters.

Rather being thoughtful and principled enough to choose a copyleft license is the truest charity of all and the most valuable for all other consumers forever after.

It's forced on everyone else after that, but I see no problem with that because remind me again just what exactly is the terrible burden being forced again?

If I get something from you and the only terms are not money but simply attribute and share-alike, that is not some burden.

That's like saying the only terms are you can have this for free and you can use it for any purpose you want, but just promise not to punch me in the face. "What? Outrageous! It's totally unreasonable to make it a condition enforced by law that I can't punch you in the face and still take your stuff."

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