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Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)

donatstudios.com

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Re: Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)

#61

Post by iamcreasy »

donatj wrote: post #31
reactordev wrote: post #23

First, you wanted people to use your tools and you gave them away for free under the MIT license. Now you’re complaining that people are using your tools. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Author here, and I agree. In the post I'm just lamenting my past choices. I gave people leeway and they used it. That is my failing, not theirs.

Genuine question: Relicensing to a more restrictive one would not stop them from copying it, right? And even if they do - would you considering pursuing legal actions against them?

Re: Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)

#63

Post by recursive »

falserum wrote: post #54
sowbug wrote: post #39

About 15 years ago I sold a car I owned. Its fair market value was $5,000, but to get that I'd have to wash it, put an ad on Craigslist, deal with the scammers who want to pay with fake money orders, meet with potential buyers, let them test-drive it, etc., and I didn't have the time or patience to do all that. So instead I sold it to a coworker at a low price, maybe $4,000. I sent an email to the company's water-coo…

> My instant emotional reaction was to feel vaguely cheated, or that the guy I sold it to was a sleaze. Were you cheated? Probably not. But the guy was definitely on a sleaziness spectrum.

I mean, I wouldn't do it, just because I don't want to deal with everything. But everyone got exactly what they wanted. I see no sleaze.

Re: Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)

#64

Post by downWidOutaFite »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #6

> Most irksome of all, in a fair number of cases they sit centrally on pages covered in ads and SEO keywords. My tools are being associated with a genuinely bad user experience. For the record, any license that does not allow users to do that would NOT be a free software license.

I hate that people think they can control the definitions of "free" and "open" . I don't care about these biased propaganda definitions. If you want to promote your definition use a branded trademarkable name, don't try to steal our shared use of common words.

Re: Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)

#65

Post by nkurz »

recursive wrote: post #63
falserum wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My instant emotional reaction was to feel vaguely cheated, or that the guy I sold it to was a sleaze. Were you cheated? Probably not. But the guy was definitely on a sleaziness spectrum.

I mean, I wouldn't do it, just because I don't want to deal with everything. But everyone got exactly what they wanted. I see no sleaze.

Lying to a co-worker about why you are buying the car doesn't strike you as sleazy? Is there a degree of misrepresentation where you'd agree, or do you feel that lying can never be sleazy?

Re: Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)

#66

Post by frognumber »

p_l wrote: post #58
frognumber wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@author You should consider your (likely) emotional and (definitely) ideological reaction to AGPL / GPL-style licensing and be pragmatic about which license you use for what. I always work from first principals, and have written code which includes proprietary, public domain, and various forms of copyleft. They all have their place. The licensing discussions become... religious in nature. It should really a pragmatic…

Except neither GPL, nor AGPL, would do anything about the case described. And that's even with AGPL violating freedom 0 through its tangled text.

Did you even read the case described? From the article:

"Many of them have made minor or major modifications to the tools, and next to none provide the source to those modifications"

"I wanted to promote community contributions, not to have them monetized by other people who don't even provide the source to their modifications"

If you did, I don't think you understood it any better than the AGPL (or freedom zero). AGPL text is not tangled. It's a very-well written text, if that's the license scope you want.

The case described is the exact purpose of these license.

Footnote: I've released two major tools 95% under the AGPL (with a few minor components under more libertarian licenses). It was the right tool for that job.

Re: Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)

#67

Post by GuB-42 »

OJFord wrote: post #12

I'm not going to go looking for them, but the impression I get of the sort of copycatters described is that they really won't care what the licence is, if the source is available they'll be there anyway - the blog post will just be complaining that it's against the terms of the licence (and probably not pursuing legal action) instead. I don't think it really matters. These things will exist, anyone who matters will r…

In fact, they already don't care. MIT requires attribution, and the author mentions in the article that "With noted exception, they don't credit me as the author or provide any sort of link back."

Re: Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)

#68

Post by o11c »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #6

> Most irksome of all, in a fair number of cases they sit centrally on pages covered in ads and SEO keywords. My tools are being associated with a genuinely bad user experience. For the record, any license that does not allow users to do that would NOT be a free software license.

Most licenses, even permissive ones, do require attribution of some sort, which in theory should move the SEO to the original.

The problem is that:

1. BSD-4-clause included an advertising clause and that was considered burdensome (similarly, GFDL-with-invariant-clauses is forbidden by e.g. Debian), so the attribution only has to remain somewhere.

2. Embedded-in-an-archive links probably don't count much for SEO. Some aspects of GPL and/or AGPL can help in some circumstances ("appropriate legal notices"), but automated AGPL requirement satisfaction in the presence of forks can actually be pretty tricky to implement even among good actors.

3. even though it's illegal, stripping of license headers remains very common

Re: Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)

#69

Post by jdbernard »

gtirloni wrote: post #41
csande17 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were actually violating the license, it'd be pretty easy and cheap to send DMCA takedowns to search engines, wouldn't it? (And possibly also whoever's hosting the copycat pages.)

It looks they are not violating anything though.

That's why he is regretting the use of the MIT license. He wonders, now, if having chosen a less permissive license would have given him grounds to shut them down, because they would be in violation.

Re: Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)

#70

Post by rmbyrro »

p_l wrote: post #57
RobotToaster wrote: post #25

>I am considering relicensing my tools under some sort of Attribution-ShareAlike license similar to the BY-SA the content on this site is licensed under. Please don't use CC licenses for code, it's not what they are designed for and the CC actively discourages it[0]. Consider using the AGPL[1] or similar instead. [0] https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm... [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-…

AGPL wouldn't prevent any of the abuses he describes, though.

It's not an abuse. This is by design. It's one thing many don't get about Open Source. The goal is to not discriminate against any kind of use.

If you want to discriminate users by how they use it, then you don't want open source.

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