7 ms·

The restrictive licenses bring nothing to the table. It is an outdated dogma. We ought to choose licences that actually enable software to be written, without n

by p0nce 9y ago

The restrictive licenses bring nothing to the table. It is an outdated dogma. We ought to choose licences that actually enable software to be written, without needless hurdles. Apple, MS and Google understood this, and they release swathes of stuff under _useful_ licences. If you make something open-source, you probably want it to be legally usable.

falcolas 9y ago
Personal opinion - If I'm writing software and releasing it as open source, and you want to use it to lessen your own workload, then I expect you to do something in return - make your changes to it available to others. You're getting the results of my labor, and my "payment" for that labor is "paying it forward" as it were. Old fashioned values perhaps, but paying it forward not a huge ask in my book.
- tortasaur 9y ago
  It's not a huge ask, especially in this day and age when the friction involved in hosting a fork with your changes is so low.
- p0nce 9y ago
  You'll mechanically get rewards in terms of bugs reported, paid bug fixes, paid enhancements etc. Useful software brings value to it by the virtue of being useful. There is also a mechanical incentive to contribute back, which is "not having to maintain a fork".
  - falcolas 9y ago
    Nothing prevents the bug reports, fixes, or enhancements in a GPL/AGPL world. > Useful software brings value to it by the virtue of being useful. To be blunt, tell that to OpenSSL and ntpd. Both are broadly used and freely licensed, yet they're chronically short contributers, bug fixes, funding, etc. Being useful to others is somewhat psychologically rewarding, as are the occasional patches and bug reports. But it's not why I (and many others) open source their software.
nathcd 9y ago
This is a pretty uncharitable description of copyleft. There are those of us who don't want our code to be used in proprietary software. When you say "licences that actually enable software to be written" or "_useful_ licences", the part you're leaving out is "licences that actually enable software to be written [and embedded in proprietary software]" and "_useful_ licences [for embedding in proprietary software]". When I write proprietary software (or code that can be used in proprietary software), I want to be compensated for it. For everything else, there's copyleft. I certainly don't want or expect everyone to follow this standard, and I'm also perfectly happy for others that share their code under permissive licenses, but for me (and others like me), copyleft is not "an outdated dogma".
- p0nce 9y ago
  The problem is this interact badly with the nature of software which is valuable by being reusable, and extract added value from what can be automated. Where there was perhaps a market need for 1 library for doing task X, now there are countless libraries doing X, each with incompatible licences and programming languages. But the added value to extract hasn't moved. Like too diverse programming languages, I feel like this creativity in licensing only weakens software quality worldwide through rework and contributes to the "too much software" problem. (edit: and it's worse with licences who aren't actually legal anywhere)

by p0nce 9y ago

falcolas 9y ago

Personal opinion - If I'm writing software and releasing it as open source, and you want to use it to lessen your own workload, then I expect you to do something in return - make your changes to it available to others. You're getting the results of my labor, and my "payment" for that labor is "paying it forward" as it were. Old fashioned values perhaps, but paying it forward not a huge ask in my book.

tortasaur 9y ago
It's not a huge ask, especially in this day and age when the friction involved in hosting a fork with your changes is so low.
p0nce 9y ago
You'll mechanically get rewards in terms of bugs reported, paid bug fixes, paid enhancements etc. Useful software brings value to it by the virtue of being useful. There is also a mechanical incentive to contribute back, which is "not having to maintain a fork".
- falcolas 9y ago
  Nothing prevents the bug reports, fixes, or enhancements in a GPL/AGPL world. > Useful software brings value to it by the virtue of being useful. To be blunt, tell that to OpenSSL and ntpd. Both are broadly used and freely licensed, yet they're chronically short contributers, bug fixes, funding, etc. Being useful to others is somewhat psychologically rewarding, as are the occasional patches and bug reports. But it's not why I (and many others) open source their software.

nathcd 9y ago

This is a pretty uncharitable description of copyleft. There are those of us who don't want our code to be used in proprietary software. When you say "licences that actually enable software to be written" or "_useful_ licences", the part you're leaving out is "licences that actually enable software to be written [and embedded in proprietary software]" and "_useful_ licences [for embedding in proprietary software]". When I write proprietary software (or code that can be used in proprietary software), I want to be compensated for it. For everything else, there's copyleft. I certainly don't want or expect everyone to follow this standard, and I'm also perfectly happy for others that share their code under permissive licenses, but for me (and others like me), copyleft is not "an outdated dogma".

p0nce 9y ago
The problem is this interact badly with the nature of software which is valuable by being reusable, and extract added value from what can be automated. Where there was perhaps a market need for 1 library for doing task X, now there are countless libraries doing X, each with incompatible licences and programming languages. But the added value to extract hasn't moved. Like too diverse programming languages, I feel like this creativity in licensing only weakens software quality worldwide through rework and contributes to the "too much software" problem. (edit: and it's worse with licences who aren't actually legal anywhere)