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Meteor is now MIT licensed

meteor.com

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Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#111

Post by enjalot »

guelo wrote: post #50
coderdude wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm open to a compelling argument for why the GPL is better than a license that basically says "you can do whatever you want with this." (From the perspective of deterring the locking down of computers by corporations.)

If it isn't obvious, GPL is an attack against proprietary computers and against the corporations that have been trying repeatedly over decades to bottle-up and monopolize the computer revolution.

I'd rather be part of making things than attacking things. That's why I go BSD or MIT with my code.

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#113

Post by muyuu »

Lazare wrote: post #6

When Meteor first launched, I was one of the very very many people who said that Meteor looked amazing, but was afraid that their license would hamper adoption. With the change in license, I think the only major hurdle has been removed. The fundamental idea is good, their current execution is extremely slick, and their immediate plans[1] look achievable. I have very high hopes for the project. If you haven't checked…

GPL was perfectly fine for a product like Meteor.

Unless you plan to modify Meteor, ship your version and not share your changes, there are very few things you can do to violate the GPL by using Meteor.

Meteor is neither a library nor boilerplate code to add upon. Lots of folks seem to be "hating" on GPL for no good reason, except maybe not knowing it (which is a good reason but it's hardly justifiable at this point).

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#114

Post by ig1 »

muyuu wrote: post #113
Lazare wrote: post #6

When Meteor first launched, I was one of the very very many people who said that Meteor looked amazing, but was afraid that their license would hamper adoption. With the change in license, I think the only major hurdle has been removed. The fundamental idea is good, their current execution is extremely slick, and their immediate plans[1] look achievable. I have very high hopes for the project. If you haven't checked…

GPL was perfectly fine for a product like Meteor. Unless you plan to modify Meteor, ship your version and not share your changes, there are very few things you can do to violate the GPL by using Meteor. Meteor is neither a library nor boilerplate code to add upon. Lots of folks seem to be "hating" on GPL for no good reason, except maybe not knowing it (which is a good reason but it's hardly justifiable at this point)…

No.

If you use a GPL library all of your code has to be released under a GPL compatible licence. The Meteor framework counts as a library due to the way it interacts with your code.

You might be confusing it with the Lesser GPL which allows library code to be incorporated into propriety software (or websites in this case).

To understand the difference between the two you should read: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#115

Post by Egregore »

muyuu wrote: post #113
Lazare wrote: post #6

When Meteor first launched, I was one of the very very many people who said that Meteor looked amazing, but was afraid that their license would hamper adoption. With the change in license, I think the only major hurdle has been removed. The fundamental idea is good, their current execution is extremely slick, and their immediate plans[1] look achievable. I have very high hopes for the project. If you haven't checked…

GPL was perfectly fine for a product like Meteor. Unless you plan to modify Meteor, ship your version and not share your changes, there are very few things you can do to violate the GPL by using Meteor. Meteor is neither a library nor boilerplate code to add upon. Lots of folks seem to be "hating" on GPL for no good reason, except maybe not knowing it (which is a good reason but it's hardly justifiable at this point)…

Some products offered under GPL license require you to publish your code if you use it as a library.(ExtJs was one example of this) So MIT license for Meteor will help wider adoption.

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#116

Post by gcr »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #94
ubernostrum wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL actually trades off freedom over time. Specifically, it trades away actual freedom right now for the person who currently has a copy of the code, in an attempt to secure potential freedom later for people who do not yet but might someday have copies of the code or of code derived from it. As such, the GPL is always, in the "now", a license which grants less freedom than, say, the BSD or MIT licenses. Most obj…

Specifically, it trades away actual freedom right now for the person who currently has a copy of the code... How so? As far as I know, if I have GPL code, I can do whatever I want with it. Could you tell me any action I might want to take that the GPL prevents? The only "freedom" the GPL removes is the freedom to restrict the actions of others. To me, that seems like a rather odd sort of freedom.

Link BSD software with the GPL code. I go out of my way to avoid or rewrite the GPL libraries I need because of this restriction.

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#117

Post by sciurus »

jwr wrote: post #79
guelo wrote: post #46

I feel it is sad that so few HN hackers seem to appreciate the vision of the GPL. GPL needs more indispensable software like this for it to thrive and protect us all from a future of completely locked down computers.

GPL restricts the pool of potential collaborators. Also, GPL has served its purpose: these days 1) almost everyone realizes that it is in everyone's interest to share code and contribute back (maintaining private forks is expensive in the long term), and 2) most software is offered as a service and the value is not just in the software, but also in the infrastructure, maintenance, support, etc, meaning you rarely enc…

In web development, perhaps. In embedded systems (including the huge world of consumer electronics like cellphones) I suspect that if the linux kernel wasn't copyleft there would be few corporate contributions to its public codebase.

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#118

Post by some1else »

geon wrote: post #70
guelo wrote: post #46

I feel it is sad that so few HN hackers seem to appreciate the vision of the GPL. GPL needs more indispensable software like this for it to thrive and protect us all from a future of completely locked down computers.

From a user perspective, GPL offers in theory more freedom, since new products built on codebase X will also be free. It is debatable if this is true in practice. If less software gets built as a result of the license restriction, the GPL takes away freedom. Even closed source software adds some freedom - the freedom of choice. From a developer perspective, there is no question which one is more free. We often do not…

Freedom of choice is inherent and not relevant to the subject.

I chose not to go to an Irish pub to watch the game between Barcelona and Madrid tonight just as I chose to investigate Derby instead of Meteor because of its previous licensing policy. We can agree that the existence of the Irish pub increased my number of possible choices, but it didn't extend my freedom of action.

I had the _option_ of going to an Irish pub, but I had the _freedom_ of smoking a cigarette at the terrace I chose to go to.

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#119

Post by muyuu »

Egregore wrote: post #115
muyuu wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL was perfectly fine for a product like Meteor. Unless you plan to modify Meteor, ship your version and not share your changes, there are very few things you can do to violate the GPL by using Meteor. Meteor is neither a library nor boilerplate code to add upon. Lots of folks seem to be "hating" on GPL for no good reason, except maybe not knowing it (which is a good reason but it's hardly justifiable at this point)…

Some products offered under GPL license require you to publish your code if you use it as a library.(ExtJs was one example of this) So MIT license for Meteor will help wider adoption.

Why would you want to ship Meteor as a library? Even if you do ship it, if you don't link to it (which I don't even think you will reasonably can) you wouldn't violate GPL.

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#120

Post by muyuu »

ig1 wrote: post #114
muyuu wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL was perfectly fine for a product like Meteor. Unless you plan to modify Meteor, ship your version and not share your changes, there are very few things you can do to violate the GPL by using Meteor. Meteor is neither a library nor boilerplate code to add upon. Lots of folks seem to be "hating" on GPL for no good reason, except maybe not knowing it (which is a good reason but it's hardly justifiable at this point)…

No. If you use a GPL library all of your code has to be released under a GPL compatible licence. The Meteor framework counts as a library due to the way it interacts with your code. You might be confusing it with the Lesser GPL which allows library code to be incorporated into propriety software (or websites in this case). To understand the difference between the two you should read: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-n…

It's not a library.

Most users of Meteor won't even ship any code at all, they will expose sites/APIs.

There's also a difference between interacting of output code and libraries.

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