3 ms·
The fact that it would take several man-years to replicate a large GPL project is enough of a deterrence. And the freedom is quite clearly defined by the FSF:
by cyphar 11y ago
The fact that it would take several man-years to replicate a large GPL project is enough of a deterrence. And the freedom is quite clearly defined by the FSF:
0. The ability to run the program as you wish.
1. The ability to modify the program and run the modified program. This requires source code.
2. The freedom to distribute exact copies of the software and source code.
3. The freedom to distribute modified copies of the software and source code.
The GPL ensures that those freedoms are upheld for any single body of work or any works derived from that work. If someone decides to completely replace your software with an alternative, that's fine. But if it's not worth their time (hint: it usually isn't) they'll begrudgingly grant their users the freedom that you wanted them to have in the first place.
The GPL does do much better than lax licenses like the MIT at both points. With an MIT license, it doesn't take any effort to make the code proprietary and thus violate both of the points you made.
- voaie 11y ago> The fact that it would take several man-years to replicate a large GPL project is enough of a deterrence. So what? Proprietary softwares have said similar words enough. > The GPL ensures that those freedoms are upheld for any single body of work or any works derived from that work. Okay, this is the only big difference, the "virus". I can use MIT to fight GPL. > With an MIT license, it doesn't take any effort to make the code proprietary and thus violate both of the points you made. My two points above are mainly for GPL. For MIT, that will be: 1. Our open-source softwares are used by more and more people, welcome to contribute if you don't want to see our softwares running everywhere with bugs in your operating system. 2. Our open-source softwares are great and free of charge. 3. Welcome to use our code for your proprietary softwares, dude. There are more and more open-source developers waiting for you.