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because they give me a service for free? Or just because we're all in this together? I'm sure it depends on the examples you pick. I'm totally happy if people

because they give me a service for free? Or just because we're all in this together? I'm sure it depends on the examples you pick. I'm totally happy if people use my MITed code in a commerical product without reciprocating. I'm not writing it for them. I'm mostly writing it for myself. The payback is the joy I feel when others find it useful. I also feel joy by being part of the larger collection of people and companies that have given me so much free stuff. Python, clang, v8, firefox, chromium, electron, zlib, libjpeg, libpng, git, sdl, react, etc etc...

sincerely 8y ago
How can you say “We’re all in this together” when youre donating your time and they use the fruits of that labor to profit off you
- pas 8y ago
  OP increases the sum in the non-zero-sum sense. Sure, gots back directly nothing, but the chance that gets more eventually increases.
- iKevinShah 8y ago
  Key differentiation here is that the person is not donating time so that a company necessarily profits off that labor. OP is getting what they (OP) are expecting out of it (joy by being a part of larger collection of people that have given them so much free stuff)
tannhaeuser 8y ago
git is a good example. It's GPLv2, but that hasn't prevented it from being used to form a near-monopoly (github) for F/OSS, now bought by MS. Linux: used in the world's largest spynet (Android). Your joy and enthusiasm being taken advantage of for nefarious purposes.
- carlmr 8y ago
  >git is a good example. It's GPLv2 Is it a good example? I'm not very firm with licensing. As far as I understand it git is not a library or a programming language, which means that even if you use it commercially you're not really modifying or repackaging it in your software, so there's really no duties arising out of it even if you use it on your servers. Your software is just communicating with git. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
  - inciampati 8y ago
    git is a both domain specific programming language and library of software routines that enable version control. Curious why you don't see it this way.
    - carlmr 8y ago
      It's a separate program though, so you're not repackaging, modifying or redistributing. Let's take for example TortoiseGit, should they decide to sell TortoiseGit now, they wouldn't have a problem with the GPL because they're not redistributing git. They just say, download git and our program will connect to it. Git does not become part of TortoiseGit at any point. You could replace the git client with one that has the same interface and it would still work.
      - lmm 8y ago
        Whether TortoiseGit is a derivative work of Git is ultimately a legal question. Certainly just being a separate binary doesn't automatically make it not one. "You could replace the git client with one that has the same interface and it would still work." - that's true of any library used in any program.
        yebyen 8y ago
        It seems like the point has been lost. Unless you're building (as your company's product) a Git client based on Git, then the license of Git is irrelevant. It does not enter into the question of how you must license your product when you publish it. Most people who have chosen to include Git in their development stack don't suffer any consequence from the fact that it is licensed as GPLv2. TortoiseGit is another matter altogether – ~in fact it must be licensed as GPLv2, because it links to libgit2. If it was changed to wrap the Git binary instead, then what you say is probably true.~ (this is false, [1] libgit2 is licensed as GPLv2 with the Linking Exception. So clients that link to it need not be licensed as GPLv2.) But most of us Git users are not actually building Git clients. [1]: https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/issues/3046 https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/issues/3046

sincerely 8y ago

How can you say “We’re all in this together” when youre donating your time and they use the fruits of that labor to profit off you

pas 8y ago
OP increases the sum in the non-zero-sum sense. Sure, gots back directly nothing, but the chance that gets more eventually increases.
iKevinShah 8y ago
Key differentiation here is that the person is not donating time so that a company necessarily profits off that labor. OP is getting what they (OP) are expecting out of it (joy by being a part of larger collection of people that have given them so much free stuff)

tannhaeuser 8y ago

git is a good example. It's GPLv2, but that hasn't prevented it from being used to form a near-monopoly (github) for F/OSS, now bought by MS. Linux: used in the world's largest spynet (Android). Your joy and enthusiasm being taken advantage of for nefarious purposes.

carlmr 8y ago
>git is a good example. It's GPLv2 Is it a good example? I'm not very firm with licensing. As far as I understand it git is not a library or a programming language, which means that even if you use it commercially you're not really modifying or repackaging it in your software, so there's really no duties arising out of it even if you use it on your servers. Your software is just communicating with git. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- inciampati 8y ago
  git is a both domain specific programming language and library of software routines that enable version control. Curious why you don't see it this way.
  - carlmr 8y ago
    It's a separate program though, so you're not repackaging, modifying or redistributing. Let's take for example TortoiseGit, should they decide to sell TortoiseGit now, they wouldn't have a problem with the GPL because they're not redistributing git. They just say, download git and our program will connect to it. Git does not become part of TortoiseGit at any point. You could replace the git client with one that has the same interface and it would still work.
    - lmm 8y ago
      Whether TortoiseGit is a derivative work of Git is ultimately a legal question. Certainly just being a separate binary doesn't automatically make it not one. "You could replace the git client with one that has the same interface and it would still work." - that's true of any library used in any program.
      - yebyen 8y ago
        It seems like the point has been lost. Unless you're building (as your company's product) a Git client based on Git, then the license of Git is irrelevant. It does not enter into the question of how you must license your product when you publish it. Most people who have chosen to include Git in their development stack don't suffer any consequence from the fact that it is licensed as GPLv2. TortoiseGit is another matter altogether – ~in fact it must be licensed as GPLv2, because it links to libgit2. If it was changed to wrap the Git binary instead, then what you say is probably true.~ (this is false, [1] libgit2 is licensed as GPLv2 with the Linking Exception. So clients that link to it need not be licensed as GPLv2.) But most of us Git users are not actually building Git clients. [1]: https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/issues/3046 https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/issues/3046