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Also, GPL3? Not my favorite license. (MIT/BSD are the best IMO)

by jwatte 10y ago

karussell 10y ago
Indeed. GPL makes sense in the short term, but in the long run an permissive licensed project forces its branches to contribute back to avoid divergence. GPL makes it harder for commercial entities to invest into it and also a permissive licensed project makes a bigger competition to e.g. Linux.
cturner 10y ago
I felt this way as well (since the mid nineties) until a couple of weeks ago when I read _Social Architecture_ by Pieter Hintjens. It has a strong idealogical flavour. He stresses that you should focus on building a community, with the code and platform as happy side-effects of that community. For that reason, you want GPL because it forces everything back into the community. He gives examples of a friend of his who slaved on a BSD project that got forked with the friend having nothing to show for it. And NT adoption of much of the code from the BSD sockets API.
- SysArchitect 10y ago
  > He stresses that you should focus on building a community, with the code and platform as happy side-effects of that community. Exactly, so license shouldn't matter that much. I'd probably be a lot more interested in it were it BSD licensed, as it is now I have no real desire to play with this new OS.
  - X86BSD 10y ago
    Seconded on the BSD license being the way forward.
  - throwawaysjshs 10y ago
    Can you explain why you prefer BSD as a contributer (I'm assuming you're not running an OS company) so much that you won't help a GPL project?
- cheiVia0 10y ago
  GPL doesn't force anything back into the community. It only requires freedom for users, not code for upstream.
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  So why has llvm/clang taken off as well as hit has? It's got a huge developer community and no one is forced to contribute back.
  - qznc 10y ago
    LLVM has taken off because the code is cleaner and more modular than GCC. Also Apple payed for all the boring grunt work. Maybe Apple would have adopted LLVM with GPL, maybe not.
ufo 10y ago
It looks like the developers want people modifying their code to contribute back, either by giving back the changes or by paying them (they offer an option to purchase a more permissively-licensed version).
protomyth 10y ago
"This software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3). Minoca offers alternative licensing choices for sale. Contact info@minocacorp.com if you or your company are interested in licensing this software under alternate terms." https://github.com/minoca/os/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/minoca/os/blob/master/LICENSE Basically, the old MySQL business model.

Also, GPL3? Not my favorite license. (MIT/BSD are the best IMO)

by jwatte 10y ago

Also, GPL3? Not my favorite license. (MIT/BSD are the best IMO)

Indeed. GPL makes sense in the short term, but in the long run an permissive licensed project forces its branches to contribute back to avoid divergence. GPL makes it harder for commercial entities to invest into it and also a permissive licensed project makes a bigger competition to e.g. Linux.

cturner 10y ago

I felt this way as well (since the mid nineties) until a couple of weeks ago when I read _Social Architecture_ by Pieter Hintjens. It has a strong idealogical flavour. He stresses that you should focus on building a community, with the code and platform as happy side-effects of that community. For that reason, you want GPL because it forces everything back into the community. He gives examples of a friend of his who slaved on a BSD project that got forked with the friend having nothing to show for it. And NT adoption of much of the code from the BSD sockets API.

SysArchitect 10y ago
> He stresses that you should focus on building a community, with the code and platform as happy side-effects of that community. Exactly, so license shouldn't matter that much. I'd probably be a lot more interested in it were it BSD licensed, as it is now I have no real desire to play with this new OS.
- X86BSD 10y ago
  Seconded on the BSD license being the way forward.
- throwawaysjshs 10y ago
  Can you explain why you prefer BSD as a contributer (I'm assuming you're not running an OS company) so much that you won't help a GPL project?
cheiVia0 10y ago
GPL doesn't force anything back into the community. It only requires freedom for users, not code for upstream.
Sanddancer 10y ago
So why has llvm/clang taken off as well as hit has? It's got a huge developer community and no one is forced to contribute back.
- qznc 10y ago
  LLVM has taken off because the code is cleaner and more modular than GCC. Also Apple payed for all the boring grunt work. Maybe Apple would have adopted LLVM with GPL, maybe not.

ufo 10y ago

It looks like the developers want people modifying their code to contribute back, either by giving back the changes or by paying them (they offer an option to purchase a more permissively-licensed version).

protomyth 10y ago

"This software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3). Minoca offers alternative licensing choices for sale. Contact info@minocacorp.com if you or your company are interested in licensing this software under alternate terms." https://github.com/minoca/os/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/minoca/os/blob/master/LICENSE Basically, the old MySQL business model.