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

Meteor is now MIT licensed

meteor.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–127 of 127 posts

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#121

Post by njharman »

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…

It enforces the pool of potential collaborators.

I value my work, it is not free. Either pay for it or agree to contribute your improvements.

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#122

Post by ig1 »

muyuu wrote: post #120
ig1 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The way Meteor works is that the client side framework is bundled with your code and pushed to the browser of the end user, it's this pushing of the merged framework + your code that counts as distribution under the GPL.

The code isn't just run server side.

Also you should read the following sections of the GPL faq which should help clarify your understanding of the issues:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatCaseIsOutputGPL (the output of a GPL program is also GPL "when the program copies part of itself into the output.")

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation (linking doesn't have to be in the compiler sense of the term any form of tight coupling between code is covered)

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#123

Post by yummyfajitas »

gcr wrote: post #116
yummyfajitas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The GPL doesn't prevent you from linking to BSD software.

All it does is prevents you from redistributing the resulting binary under a license that could result in the user's freedom being restricted. I.e., the only thing that is prevented is (BSD, GPL) -> BSD, since the next step might be BSD -> Proprietary.

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#124

Post by muyuu »

ig1 wrote: post #122
muyuu wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The way Meteor works is that the client side framework is bundled with your code and pushed to the browser of the end user, it's this pushing of the merged framework + your code that counts as distribution under the GPL. The code isn't just run server side. Also you should read the following sections of the GPL faq which should help clarify your understanding of the issues: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#Wh…

What I don't understand well yet is the way Meteor works. I'm waiting until they (and firebase) make their final version available, although I've played a bit with them.

If it does bundle itself then it could have implications. Maybe LGPL would be more reasonable then.

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#125

Post by pconf »

pornel wrote: post #97
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…

I agree with your first paragraph, but come to different conclusions. The way I see it GPL values freedom over short-term gains. You can put BSD software in the AppStore, which is nice short term, but long-term that's helping platform that is a golden cage. Wouldn't it be nice if Android was GPL v3? Instead of giving operators freedom to lock down handsets and add uninstallable crapware, give users freedom to customi…

>Wouldn't it be nice if Android was GPL v3?

Not necessarily. WebOS is/was closer to a Linux/GPL distribution than any other smartphone and look what happened to them.

>You can put BSD software in the AppStore, which is nice short term,

It's also nice long-term as the code maintainers don't have to make decisions based on the risk of getting sued, as they would with GPL-based code.

>but long-term that's helping platform that is a golden cage.

Golden cage? How do you figure?

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#126

Post by pconf »

jaredsohn wrote: post #106
mattbriggs wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a users perspective there is no difference, because only programmers care about source code.

The freedom potentially lost to users due to Meteor going with a non-GPL open source license is that somebody could fork it and make a better version that eventually becomes dominant but restricts the user by {charging money, only working in a subset of environments, not being updated to work with other web languages, or just lacking a desired feature}. Edit: I'm personally glad they went with the MIT license. Also,…

> I'm personally glad they went with the MIT license. Also, even if a fork takes place, the original code is still available.

I think this is a point many fail to consider. BSD and GPL are, in many ways, synergistic. Having libraries available in both is the best ecosystem for both devs and end-users, IMO.

Re: Meteor is now MIT licensed

#127

Post by gcr »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #123
gcr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The GPL doesn't prevent you from linking to BSD software. All it does is prevents you from redistributing the resulting binary under a license that could result in the user's freedom being restricted. I.e., the only thing that is prevented is (BSD, GPL) -> BSD, since the next step might be BSD -> Proprietary.

Right. I want to give others the freedom to use my software in propietary ways, so I put my software under a BSD license. This means I can't use GPL-licensed libraries.
Post reply on HN