Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I changed my license

bergie.iki.fi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 198 posts

Re: I changed my license

#131

Post by bluGill »

RobotToaster wrote: post #112
bluGill wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGPL does not do anything to force people to contribute their changes back. They have to make the changes available, however that's very different from actually contributing back. It is not hard to make a low quality contribution that the upstream would for very good reason refuse even though it 'works'. The poster child for this is chromium which is GPL because it has clear and obvious roots in the old KHTML code of…

By "contribute back" I was referring more generally to the commons. The chrome example actually proves my point, the KDE project, or anyone for that matter, can take the changes Google made to their code. If KHTML was MIT it's likely that wouldn't be the case

Practically though, there is no difference. The KDE project has lost control over the web browser, even though they started it. It's an all or nothing. They can take all of chrome or they can take nothing. There is no in between. If KDE and Google disagree on the direction of the web browser, Google wins. There is no control. There's no advantage to open source, other than it's free. It may as well be a closed source project for all the good it does.

Re: I changed my license

#132

Post by Joel_Mckay »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #130
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

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

I would suggest reading "A Clockwork Orange", as it highlights why compulsory ethics is no longer just without free will. Spoiler, even if people lobotomize a murderer to have their behavior meet an arbitrary definition of societal good it is just as unethical.

>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?

Adding what is effectively an end user copyright DRM submarine under the flag of FOSS is tantamount to sabotage.

I do not see the distinction between copyright and copyleft trolls. They both demand end users give up freedoms to meet a selfish ideal.

If someone wants to control how people use their stuff, than just stop calling it a FOSS work. Some seem very passionate about the subject, but I don't think anyone has ever been murdered over shitty code. =3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ

Re: I changed my license

#133

Post by VladStanimir »

RobotToaster wrote: post #94
bob1029 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are trying to monetize your software, the biggest factor is whether or not your customer trusts you. MIT and source out on GitHub is the easiest way to build trust. You will find that some people simply "steal" your work in this arrangement, but much like with movie piracy I don't think they ever intended to compensate you or anyone else. So, we wind up alienating all potential customers because we are so worr…

How does MIT build any more trust than a copyleft licence like AGPL? At the very least AGPL stops people "stealing" your work without contributing back their changes?

You can't be stealing what is given away for free. Developers that choose copileft license want to see al changes shared under the same license. Developers that choose permissive want their code to be of use to as many developers as possible for whatever they want to use it for.

Re: I changed my license

#134

Post by LtWorf »

knorker wrote: post #128
LtWorf wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you read my comment or you just reply for the sake of it?

I release the code so that people and companies that feel like contributing to the community can use it. Companies that want to take without giving back however are mildly inconvenienced by copyleft.

Re: I changed my license

#135

Post by ValdikSS »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #102
RobotToaster wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usual way I've seen it work is using the AGPL. AGPL doesn't bar use in commercial production, but the requirements usually scare off any corporate from using it in production.

I like the AGPL but don’t often use it. (I did recently license two coding harnesses I wrote as AGPL.) A long time ago, I didn’t mind huge tech companies getting rich partially via open source, now I do. In the USA the collusion between government and big tech is starting to smell a little bit like fascism. Sorry, I have only complaints, not any good answers.

>A long time ago, I didn’t mind huge tech companies getting rich partially via open source, now I do.

Is the concern that anybody will be earning money on your software (just that), or that you won't get any money, or that they will earn money and don't give back the code?

If the company earns money and opens the code, is that OK for you?

Just for you and for everyone information, Richard Stallman himself told people not only to sell their own software, but the software written by others as well!

> Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

AGPL, just as all other GPL, does not prohibit selling the software. If you goal is to make your software unsellable, please use your own licensing terms (there's nothing wrong with that!!!)

Re: I changed my license

#136

Post by LtWorf »

brainwad wrote: post #119
LtWorf wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why? MIT license or public domain helps the most people, because anyone can use it. It being usable by corporations is purely additive, it can't subtract from the number of people you'd help with a copyleft license.

Putting people out of jobs doesn't necessarily help them?

Re: I changed my license

#137

Post by ghaff »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #125
RobotToaster wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had something similar happen with a book I wrote through a publisher. I went radio silence on him. Would have required contacting my publisher and I didn't need the hassle.

Re: I changed my license

#138

Post by ghaff »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #106
jruohonen wrote: post #2

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.)

BY-SA As both a consumer and producer, NC makes it kind of a pointless untouchable dead end even if I never intend to make a business out of something. A lot of unintended things could be argued as commecial and who wants to risk it? If I do something purely as ahobby, and along the way make a youtube video about it, and that video pays money, I suddenly become techically in violation of non-commercial. Or I use it i…

I wouldn't use an NC photo on a big company stage or in a marketing campaign. But I sort of convinced myself I wasn't being directly paid for most of the presentations that I did and do, so it was OK enough. And I don't materially rework most photos or text.

Re: I changed my license

#139

Post by ghaff »

roundabout-host wrote: post #87
ghaff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think of it more in the context of photo and video integrity, but you can certainly imagine an unscrupulous individual rewriting something and changing the meaning. Of course, I doubt a license would stop that person.

Doesn't CC BY require to say what you changed?

Not really. You're supposed to attribute the original creator. And if I did make major changes/additions I'd find some way to flag that. But you don't have a Github-style change log.
Post reply on HN