My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL • Hacker News Board

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#11

Post by raphlinus » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

I absolutely encourage people to choose the license that works best for them. My motion has been the other way, all my new stuff is permissively licensed. This is basically because I want my work to have broad impact, and have the possibility of collaborating with as many others as possible, including those making proprietary software.

I'm a fan of Drew's work, and also hope to help GPL projects such as Inkscape (I met many such developers at Libre Graphics Meeting). Choose the license that works best for you, and if you can articulate the reasons for your choice, as Drew has done here, even better.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#12

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

ben509 wrote: post #4

oarsinsync wrote: post #2

This very clearly and simply describes the differences between absolute freedom, limited freedom, and the value of limiting freedom. In a way, it's similar to the paradox of tolerance, and a tolerant society needing to be intolerant of those that are intolerant. Or to quote Team America: freedom isn't free. I may be re-thinking my own use of BSD licensing in favour of something more copyleft in future too.

> In a way, it's similar to the paradox of tolerance, and a tolerant society needing to be intolerant of those that are intolerant. That's not a paradox; you're just intolerant. Whether you're right or wrong to be so is immaterial, as is whether the people you're intolerant of are also intolerant.

[deleted]

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#13

Post by ocdtrekkie » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

theturtletalks wrote: post #7

I about to launch an open core SaaS and all these articles about open source software getting exploited and how copyleft should be the way to go is getting me confused. The software is for e-commerce. So if users use it to make more money, is that considered commercial use? Would the copyleft license require them to get a commercial license then? Would this cause less adoption and less use of the software? What kind…

No, copyleft doesn't prevent commercial use. In fact, preventing commercial use is impossible with the GPL.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#14

Post by jameskilton » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

ben509 wrote: post #4

oarsinsync wrote: post #2

This very clearly and simply describes the differences between absolute freedom, limited freedom, and the value of limiting freedom. In a way, it's similar to the paradox of tolerance, and a tolerant society needing to be intolerant of those that are intolerant. Or to quote Team America: freedom isn't free. I may be re-thinking my own use of BSD licensing in favour of something more copyleft in future too.

> In a way, it's similar to the paradox of tolerance, and a tolerant society needing to be intolerant of those that are intolerant. That's not a paradox; you're just intolerant. Whether you're right or wrong to be so is immaterial, as is whether the people you're intolerant of are also intolerant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#15

Post by neuland » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

> The GPL is the legal embodiment of this Golden Rule: in exchange for benefiting from my hard work, you just have to extend me the same courtesy.

This is a great article that's focused on just explaining why GPL is good. But I'm wondering what people think about enforcing this part of the GPL.

I was very disheartened to see the Linux community's and other GPL projects' attitude to enforcement actions brought by individuals.

If you ask people to contribute under the terms of the GPL, I think that it is fair for those contributions to be enforced. And unless a project has some kind of CLA that excludes it, the individual contributor should be able to hold violators to the copyleft portions of the license.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#16

Post by forkerenok » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

I have a feeling that the jury is still out on this one.

My observations are that:

* MIT license increases adoption of OS projects, increasing pool of potential contributors and derivative works

* People like sharing what they create, hence derivative works are likely to be shared with the world as well.

I know there are companies that utilize tons of free code without contributing enough back.

Overall to me the difference:

* MIT license increases throughput, hence increases participation in absolute terms

* GPL licenses limit throughout, but improves overall quality of participation

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#17

Post by yingw787 » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

Linux probably wouldn't have gotten the investment to become the server OS of choice if it wasn't for Microsoft and Oracle licensing. Chrome only has user concerns now because of business constraints around adblock, and only then do users gravitate back to Firefox (I am guilty of this). GPL in this sense might get in the way of providing user impact, and IMHO positive user experience with FOSS is critical to sustaining FOSS development.

I'd love to see hard metrics on enterprise Linux tech stacks; I would hazard to guess most business-critical FOSS is Apache/BSD, the latest Javascript framework is probably MIT, and most UNIX-philosophy FOSS (those with a "done" point) is GPL.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#18

Post by lone_haxx0r » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

oarsinsync wrote: post #2

This very clearly and simply describes the differences between absolute freedom, limited freedom, and the value of limiting freedom. In a way, it's similar to the paradox of tolerance, and a tolerant society needing to be intolerant of those that are intolerant. Or to quote Team America: freedom isn't free. I may be re-thinking my own use of BSD licensing in favour of something more copyleft in future too.

It's the difference between political freedom and metaphorical freedom (knowledge & rights).

Political freedom I define as not being subject to violence unless you're attacking someone or stealing (material objects) from someone.

Metaphorical (software) freedom is being in control of your computer, that means: you run free software (you know what you're running) and you can use and distribute it freely. There is nothing inherently violent in closed source programs.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#19

Post by kiliantics » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #8

coreyp_1 wrote: post #3

This includes a cynical view of capitalism, too.

Self preservation or self interest is important. You can't really do much for others if you dont have your own stuff together. Having said that, modern capitalism is moving toward pure self interest and even exploitation of others. The author correctly identified the one freedom the GPL denies - the freedom to exploit the work of others purely for your own gain.

capitalism was always about exploitation of others

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#20

Post by naringas » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 3:32 PM UTC

ben509 wrote: post #4

oarsinsync wrote: post #2

This very clearly and simply describes the differences between absolute freedom, limited freedom, and the value of limiting freedom. In a way, it's similar to the paradox of tolerance, and a tolerant society needing to be intolerant of those that are intolerant. Or to quote Team America: freedom isn't free. I may be re-thinking my own use of BSD licensing in favour of something more copyleft in future too.

> In a way, it's similar to the paradox of tolerance, and a tolerant society needing to be intolerant of those that are intolerant. That's not a paradox; you're just intolerant. Whether you're right or wrong to be so is immaterial, as is whether the people you're intolerant of are also intolerant.

the paradox isn't about what you are or aren't. but about what you should be.

it is certainly a subtle nuanced issue.