Light Table 0.7.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Light Table 0.7.0

#41

Post by simula67 » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 4:15 AM UTC

jamii wrote: post #16

deng wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I did not get that either. I also do not understand why the GPLv3 would necessitate a contributor agreement, but MIT would not. I always thought those agreements were necessary so that one institution has copyright and can change the license without getting approval from every author. That applies to any free license, doesn't it? Anyway, I think they just wanted to change to MIT before new authors commit withou…

The decisions were largely separate. The goal of having a CA was to leave us the option of selling commercial plugins in the future. We no longer plan to do that so we got rid of it. Separately, we kept hearing that the GPL is a hurdle to adoption at some companies so we switched to MIT.

Did you consider alternatives, like for example, Mozilla Public License version 2 ? It is a file based copy-left license that is compatible with GPL.

Re: Light Table 0.7.0

#42

Post by ijk » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 4:34 AM UTC

wldcordeiro wrote: post #7

I've considered using Light Table for a while but the fact that there isn't a simple way to install it on Linux (either via apt or another package manager or a packaged version like a deb/rpm) keeps me from bothering.

Try the download link at http://lighttable.com/

Re: Light Table 0.7.0

#43

Post by djur » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 4:48 AM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #25

pnathan wrote: post #9

What issue could possibly exist for using a GPL editor? It's not being shipped from a company...

People rightly or wrongly don't feel comfortable modifying GPL code. And don't see any benefits to GPL. That seems pretty straightforward to me.

Why would people not feel comfortable modifying GPL code? The entire goal of the license is to allow people to make and distribute modified versions.

Re: Light Table 0.7.0

#44

Post by djur » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 4:53 AM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #22

ibdthor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are definitely correct that some of the aversion is a knee jerk reaction and misunderstanding, but that aside, the MIT license is very end user friendly, more understood than the GPL, and more permissive to the end user, plus we kept hearing from folks that that's what they wanted, so we switched.

BSD is _developer_ friendly, not end-user friendly. In this case, your end users are developers, though... The GPL sacrifices developer freedoms for end-user freedoms. I don't think it's any inherently more or less free. But then you get into discussions of what 'freedom' means... I have written a ton of software licensed as each, and the tide is certainly turning toward the BSD. It just bums me out.

I was very pleased that Light Table went against the current fad and adopted the GPL, so this turn of events is exceptionally disappointing. Editors/IDEs are particularly effective places to use copyleft, because it encourages the development of a free software ecosystem around them.

Re: Light Table 0.7.0

#45

Post by guscost » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 5:11 AM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #39

owenversteeg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I will not contribute to something that's GPLed unless it's really important project - the Linux kernel for example. I know a lot of other developers that think the same.

Why?

In most cases, if I've written some open source code I would rather see someone exploit it for profit than see someone prevented from using it because they can't meet the license terms. I don't claim to speak for anyone else but that is the logic.

Re: Light Table 0.7.0

#46

Post by michaelsbradley » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 5:18 AM UTC

jamii wrote: post #16

deng wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I did not get that either. I also do not understand why the GPLv3 would necessitate a contributor agreement, but MIT would not. I always thought those agreements were necessary so that one institution has copyright and can change the license without getting approval from every author. That applies to any free license, doesn't it? Anyway, I think they just wanted to change to MIT before new authors commit withou…

The decisions were largely separate. The goal of having a CA was to leave us the option of selling commercial plugins in the future. We no longer plan to do that so we got rid of it. Separately, we kept hearing that the GPL is a hurdle to adoption at some companies so we switched to MIT.

Why not adopt the Eclipse Public License (EPL), which is the license used for Clojure/Script and the majority of open source Clojure libraries?

http://opensource.org/licenses/EPL-1.0

Re: Light Table 0.7.0

#47

Post by zurn » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 5:26 AM UTC

It would be cool to see some videos of the current LightTable, since it was the demo videos of the original prototype that made its name originally.

FWIW I remember trying LT once post-open sourcing and ran out of enthusiasm before I could figure out how to see any of the "cool stuff from the video".

Re: Light Table 0.7.0

#48

Post by Someone » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 7:16 AM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #9

What issue could possibly exist for using a GPL editor? It's not being shipped from a company...

I don't think 'shipped' has been clearly defined in court. Let say you extend it in-house, contractors move in, and you let them install the modified development environment on their laptops. Do you have to give them your changes upon request, licensed under the GPL?

Also, if you make a web-based product based on this, and a customer insists on hosting it in its cloud (many do because they do not want to, or in practice aren't allowed to, let their data out of their systems), can you sell it?

In both cases, did your patents just get free for all to use?

The moment you let in GPL code, you either give up having non-GPL code in your company, or you have to start spending time keeping the GPL and non-GPL code apart. If you do the latter, it also affects your flexibility.

Re: Light Table 0.7.0

#49

Post by da4c30ff » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 7:21 AM UTC

I wonder how many people contributed under the assumption that their contributions would remain under GPL. I assume the CLA specifies their right to change the license?

Re: Light Table 0.7.0

#50

Post by lgas » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 7:34 AM UTC

da4c30ff wrote: post #49

I wonder how many people contributed under the assumption that their contributions would remain under GPL. I assume the CLA specifies their right to change the license?

I'm not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that the existing licenses still apply to the existing code but new versions can always be licensed under a new license (on each release if they wanted), because of the very fact that it's just that: a new release.