9 ms·

Copyleft and community licenses are not without merit, but they are a dead end

45 points by pauldix 8y ago

claudiawerner 8y ago
>People are motivated not only by a sense of purpose and the desire to contribute to something greater, but also by improving their lot in life and that of their families and heirs (read: capitalism). Copyleft ignores the latter while assuming the former will make everything ok. This is a bit of a tricky sentence, because it's clear that capitalism isn't simply the motivation to improve your lot in life, since this was around since before capitalism. The idea that "copyleft" ignores the desire to improve one's lot in life is silly. Much more often (though not even necessarily) it's individuals themselves who would rather give something to the world (and make sure it keeps giving to the world if it's something good) - and they choose a license accordingly. It's also strange to me that while it's less likely the most ardent capitalist supports the GPL or copyleft licenses, Richard Stallman is something of a little-L libertarian himself. In fact, he views software freedom as an important freedom like freedom of speech is, to be counted among the liberal ideas that the bourgeois (capitalist) revolution ushered in. Copyleft-as-freedom (in the sense that a freedom cannot be exercised to remove the freedom of others) is spiritually just as much of a 'capitalist' ideal as permissive licensing is, and the distinction can't be reduced down to the more modern dichotomy of positive and negative liberties, since even in terms of software, the content of the freedom can be framed in terms of either. >The community licenses fall in exactly the same boat. They’re open, free to use and contribute to, as long as you follow the set of rules and restrictions. Whether they are open source is a boring semantic argument. If you claim they are not, then copyleft licenses aren’t either, unless you’re actually a crusader. If that’s you, I recommend having some whiskey ready for when the cruel realities of life come crashing down. This is my main disagreement with the author. By brushing aside discussion of whether something is 'open source' as a mere semantic argument, he's of the idea that the principle can be abstracted away from the software. But in the case of open source software, I'm an essentialist; open source software is essentially open source, and in this Platonic sense is how I understand open source to be, just as an idealist might understand pears, apples and oranges to be part of something supersensibly real - fruit, not merely a mental idea. The issue that people (like me) take with "community licenses" isn't that they have restrictions, it's that the restrictions are fundamentally at odds with what open source (or "free" or whatever other term you'd like to use for the essence of this software which would be well represented by a random aliquot of Github to be representative of the class). The author has tricked us - "open, free to use and contribute to" misses out a massive component of what we consider free software (including copyleft licenses) to be. To me (YMMV) free software contains the hope for a better world, one which may be incompatible with this one. The talk of monetization and creating a 'business' around it has come about very naturally in the trend of commodification. Many people are (justifiably) upset because open source like houses or art now faces an internal contradiction between use-value and exchange-value, and it must do, in order to survive in a world dominated by capital, in which between 8 to 12 hours of our days are shifted towards those activities which produce exchange value away from those that don't.
gtirloni 8y ago
I remember a time when people complaining about "open core" licensing were considered OSS zealots. That includes me. Now, in light of even more restrictive licensing options being adopted by prominent companies, "open core" seems awesome! It feels like we take one step forward and two back. I'll just say, I wish these companies went full proprietary and stopped capitalizing on community participation while disdaining it at the same time.
dmm 8y ago
It was interesting reading this person's viewpoints but I think they misunderstand the point of copyleft licenses. > They’re forcing a world view that everything should be free and shared like some sort of make-believe Star Trek future where money doesn’t exist. Is a world where you are allowed to repair and modify your own house or car a "make-believe Star Trek future"? Asking to have insight and control over the software which plays an increasingly important role in our lives is not a fantasy to be dismissed. > Ultimately, in my philosophy, copyleft represents real open source, despite what the OSI says. Copyleft is a restriction. A typo? A restriction for you the creator perhaps, but for your users it represents the freedom to use, modify, and redistribute the software they use.
- z0r 8y ago
  Rather than copyleft being a Star Trek fantasy, one being restricted from modifying (fixing) software they use is the science fiction dystopia!
- pauldix 8y ago
  Ah, good catch on the typo. I meant the opposite of that, but so many edits messed it up. I get the idea that copyleft gives people the freedom to see the code and modify, but the limitations it imposes for using that code in derivative works is what makes me think it's a utopian ideal.
  - efaref 8y ago
    The limitations it imposes are the price.
  - cyphar 8y ago
    > I get the idea that copyleft gives people the freedom to see the code and modify, but the limitations it imposes for using that code in derivative works is what makes me think it's a utopian ideal. The problem is you can't get the benefits without the cost. And all of the derivative works problems are political -- the issue is that companies don't want to (or can't for various reasons) give you their changes. Personally I view this as antisocial and shortsighted behaviour (when a company fails, the work in their fork is lost). Though to be honest, most proprietary changes aren't very good. The GPL is just one more (political) hiccup that gives an incentive for companies to contribute upstream -- in addition to general out-of-tree problems.
antirez 8y ago
I agree with the overall reasoning of Paul, and we are having the same conversations inside Redis Labs. For instance the reason why Redis remained BSD licensed is that, while it's odd that cloud providers are exploiting open source system software in this way, yet to look just at that does not capture the whole story. Open source software changed our world completely, so the real balance must factor in also what happened to IT because open source exists. Even what now is a problem for OSS producers, the cloud providers, is in some way a product of the fact that software was democratised in this way by the OSS movement (and note that without the cloud to productize OSS is harder). Personally even the fact I write software is because I installed Linux 23 years ago or alike. So the point is to also have something that is interesting enough and that can be released in a commercial license and is complementary to the original project. Because the part that needs to be commercial, must go totally commercial (it's a long story but AGPL for sure, and probably also other attempts including SSPL and Common Clause are not just confusing, they may not be enough). However what this requires is a very good balance between what's open and what not. In the case of Redis this is a bit a natural process because I'm very unwelcoming to a lot of things that users want because I feel they are not a fit. Proof is that for instance, two of my popular open source projects, that are linenoise and dump1090, are currently both mostly distributed via forks made by other people. So Redis Labs can just jump in and do a number of very useful things like graph database, CRDTs, on-disk support and so forth without any conflict of interests. Let's see what happens. Right now the trend is to distribute the non-open parts with source code available and with very few limitations for end users: if this works is great, and it looks like is the only way because it is very unlikely that users will have the need of something as a service if they do not use it already in some form. DISCLAIMER: This comment was written incrementally and modified several times adding things that came to mind while writing. About BSD,MIT,... vs CopyLeft. We can say what we want, but if we just stick to facts, MIT-alike licenses provide more freedom for the final user. If one would like to dig more I think that the canonical example would be the Linux kernel and asking questions about, what if it would be BSD licensed.
- pauldix 8y ago
  Yeah, I'd be interested in an analysis of open source projects that are copyleft licensed and successful with the "what if" question posed about if they were MIT or similar. I'm definitely not the person to put forward an educated opinion on those.
wwweston 8y ago
> If software is a process of evolution and continuously building on previous work, copyleft licenses represent an evolutionary dead end, while liberal licenses represent branches of the tree that can live and progress much longer. This strikes me as not quite right and a bit out of place for an essay that's otherwise pretty thoughtful. Copyleft is a niche or a branch, not a dead end. There's a fundamental question facing anyone approaching the economics of a software project (and the economics of many other kinds of projects too): how much of the value of the project do you try to control/capture vs how much do you try to share in an effort to multiply the value? Source licensing questions are a subset of this: how much of the value of the project lies in certain levels of control of the source vs the prospect of a community around the source. The copyleft licenses are one answer to the question: if the utility value of software developed by an active community around the source strictly exceeds the value of any one player controlling access to the source, control the source to maintain community property of contributions, but let anyone work out their answer to the value capture question via the utility of the software or their knowledge about it. It isn't the only answer and I think it's fair to say that not every useful piece of software can be developed or maintained on that model, which is why I'd say it's an adaptation to a niche. A niche is pretty different than a dead end, though. This also addresses some odd conceptions of copyleft being incompatible with improving ones own lot or based in premature adoption of Star Trek values.
- pauldix 8y ago
  Heh, the Star Trek thing might have been a bit of an overreach based on people's reactions, but let me see if I can restate the point I was trying to make with that little bit. Licenses like MIT give the most possible freedom, particularly with how derivative works are commercialized. Copyleft licenses limit the freedoms of derivative works by forcing them to be copyleft (although with some hacks and exceptions). This limitation means that options for creating a derivative commercial product from copyleft sources are very limited. If you are able to get around the copyleft restriction (like SaaS products developed on GPL and AGPL'd software) then you are able to build a commercial product. But if you want to ship that software to a customer in a licensed product or a piece of hardware, you won't be able to do it without exposing your entire source code to be copyleft. I've heard people argue that copyleft is better because it forces this opening of source on everyone. It's a utopian ideal that I think limits its utility, particularly with regard to derivative works.
stcredzero 8y ago
Ok, let’s get into licensing. Copyleft licenses like AGPL and SSPL have a weaker result in terms of overall benefit to society than liberal licenses like MIT and Apache2. You can take two interpretations on copyleft, which I’ll call “the crusader” or “the capitalist”. The problem with the "crusader" model, as practiced, is that it came with a "you're either with us, or you're against us" stance. This created a community subculture which encouraged the alienation of potential allies and served more to make the Free Software movement more of a hipster pose. It served more to make Free Software a kind of antipodean "unwalled" garden, where the barriers to entry also acted as a validation of the virtue signal. Don't get me wrong. Copyleft licenses have a place. It's just that the place is not "Uber alles."
- Proven 8y ago
  Personally I make an effort to not contribute to any freedom-limiting software (GPL 2.0 is already bad enough, but GPL 3 is way worse). I explicitly check for GPL 3 and make sure I don't help in any way. The alienation created by the crusader model is deliberate. It's meant to control and change, not to live and let live.
Proven 8y ago
> Copyleft is a restriction. This can't be emphasized enough, after an entire generation of users and developers has been raised listening to "fake license news" from the likes of Stallman.
Animats 8y ago
If Linux was MIT-licensed, there would be proprietary "Linux with Oracle extensions" and "Linux with Microsoft extensions". They'd cost money, wouldn't operate without the the closed source parts, and would be incompatible. Engulf, extend, devour.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nickpsecurity 8y ago
  Oh no, it would've been worse from the fact that Microsoft and Oracle used BSD code in their proprietary OS's whose code they certainly didn't share. Plus, all the money they made let them fight against software freedoms with monopolistic schemes, lobbying, and lawsuits. It's much worse than just an open product with extensions.
  - speedplane 8y ago
    This already exists... Android is MIT licensed and nearly every cell phone vendor has incompatible proprietary extensions.
    - nickpsecurity 8y ago
      It's Apache 2.0 and it did lead to incompatible, proprietary extensions: https://source.android.com/setup/start/licenses https://source.android.com/setup/start/licenses
guelo 8y ago
GPL was a mostly failed, idealistic attempt at creating a separate non-commercial hobbyist computing ecosystem. It's not a big surprise that corporate developers don't like non-commercial software that they're not allowed to use.
- indymike 8y ago
  Calling GPL a failure or non-commercial is to ignore the role of GPL software in the ISP, Hosting and cloud computing industries. For those of us writing commercial software, as the article points out, the GPL makes it very hard to create a license revenue driven business. Selling licenses is not the only model, but it is a proven one.
- pritambaral 8y ago
  This is way off-base. The GPL neither wanted to not has been able to restrict commercial profit from the works it's been used with. You also imply GPL prevents corporate developers from using GPL'ed software, which is patently untrue. The GPL allows any person or organisation to take software and do absolutely anything they want with it, for themselves, without any obligation. The GPL might have come out of a non-commercial hobbyist/hacker culture, but it certainly doesn't impose either practice.
xvilka 8y ago
I think it won't help them in the long run - people and companies will just switch to another software with friendlier license (or a new software will emerge).
heyjudy 8y ago
The challenges are: 0. Megacorps exploiting FOSS and not volunteering enough (a) money or (b) code back overall. 1. The limitations brought on everyone who's not a megacorp by authors trying to acheive 0a &| 0b. As such, there are some difficult &| uncool ways around this: i. A name-and-shame web app that everyone know about that impacts a company's sales and reputation if it cheats FOSS. ii. Going micropayment commercial with intrusive license auditing to verify compliance. iii. Begging harder from big companies that are known to abuse FOSS. PS: Before OSS was popular, shareware/freeware with code hidden like it was some sort of arcane secret magic much as scientists did before the modern era.
- SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
  But (0) is a completely neutral thing for most members of a FOSS community. Amazon starting up a new service won't stop me from merging code or change my (generally zero) income. It only hurts you if you're another company who also wants to exploit the software for profit.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ajross 8y ago
> Ok, let’s get into licensing. Copyleft licenses like AGPL and SSPL have a weaker result in terms of overall benefit to society than liberal licenses like MIT and Apache2. [...] They’re forcing a world view that everything should be free and shared like some sort of make-believe Star Trek future where money doesn’t exist. That's FUD right out of 1998. Sigh. Look, any attack on copyleft needs to start from a position of describing how any of the open source revolution of the last two decades happens without it. I mean, basically everything was driven by GPL software. Instead, this starts from a position of poop flinging by calling GPL proponents naive communists. I don't see that it gets any better. Skip.

45 points by pauldix 8y ago

>People are motivated not only by a sense of purpose and the desire to contribute to something greater, but also by improving their lot in life and that of their families and heirs (read: capitalism). Copyleft ignores the latter while assuming the former will make everything ok. This is a bit of a tricky sentence, because it's clear that capitalism isn't simply the motivation to improve your lot in life, since this was around since before capitalism. The idea that "copyleft" ignores the desire to improve one's lot in life is silly. Much more often (though not even necessarily) it's individuals themselves who would rather give something to the world (and make sure it keeps giving to the world if it's something good) - and they choose a license accordingly. It's also strange to me that while it's less likely the most ardent capitalist supports the GPL or copyleft licenses, Richard Stallman is something of a little-L libertarian himself. In fact, he views software freedom as an important freedom like freedom of speech is, to be counted among the liberal ideas that the bourgeois (capitalist) revolution ushered in. Copyleft-as-freedom (in the sense that a freedom cannot be exercised to remove the freedom of others) is spiritually just as much of a 'capitalist' ideal as permissive licensing is, and the distinction can't be reduced down to the more modern dichotomy of positive and negative liberties, since even in terms of software, the content of the freedom can be framed in terms of either. >The community licenses fall in exactly the same boat. They’re open, free to use and contribute to, as long as you follow the set of rules and restrictions. Whether they are open source is a boring semantic argument. If you claim they are not, then copyleft licenses aren’t either, unless you’re actually a crusader. If that’s you, I recommend having some whiskey ready for when the cruel realities of life come crashing down. This is my main disagreement with the author. By brushing aside discussion of whether something is 'open source' as a mere semantic argument, he's of the idea that the principle can be abstracted away from the software. But in the case of open source software, I'm an essentialist; open source software is essentially open source, and in this Platonic sense is how I understand open source to be, just as an idealist might understand pears, apples and oranges to be part of something supersensibly real - fruit, not merely a mental idea. The issue that people (like me) take with "community licenses" isn't that they have restrictions, it's that the restrictions are fundamentally at odds with what open source (or "free" or whatever other term you'd like to use for the essence of this software which would be well represented by a random aliquot of Github to be representative of the class). The author has tricked us - "open, free to use and contribute to" misses out a massive component of what we consider free software (including copyleft licenses) to be. To me (YMMV) free software contains the hope for a better world, one which may be incompatible with this one. The talk of monetization and creating a 'business' around it has come about very naturally in the trend of commodification. Many people are (justifiably) upset because open source like houses or art now faces an internal contradiction between use-value and exchange-value, and it must do, in order to survive in a world dominated by capital, in which between 8 to 12 hours of our days are shifted towards those activities which produce exchange value away from those that don't.

gtirloni 8y ago

I remember a time when people complaining about "open core" licensing were considered OSS zealots. That includes me. Now, in light of even more restrictive licensing options being adopted by prominent companies, "open core" seems awesome! It feels like we take one step forward and two back. I'll just say, I wish these companies went full proprietary and stopped capitalizing on community participation while disdaining it at the same time.

dmm 8y ago

It was interesting reading this person's viewpoints but I think they misunderstand the point of copyleft licenses. > They’re forcing a world view that everything should be free and shared like some sort of make-believe Star Trek future where money doesn’t exist. Is a world where you are allowed to repair and modify your own house or car a "make-believe Star Trek future"? Asking to have insight and control over the software which plays an increasingly important role in our lives is not a fantasy to be dismissed. > Ultimately, in my philosophy, copyleft represents real open source, despite what the OSI says. Copyleft is a restriction. A typo? A restriction for you the creator perhaps, but for your users it represents the freedom to use, modify, and redistribute the software they use.

z0r 8y ago
Rather than copyleft being a Star Trek fantasy, one being restricted from modifying (fixing) software they use is the science fiction dystopia!
pauldix 8y ago
Ah, good catch on the typo. I meant the opposite of that, but so many edits messed it up. I get the idea that copyleft gives people the freedom to see the code and modify, but the limitations it imposes for using that code in derivative works is what makes me think it's a utopian ideal.
- efaref 8y ago
  The limitations it imposes are the price.
- cyphar 8y ago
  > I get the idea that copyleft gives people the freedom to see the code and modify, but the limitations it imposes for using that code in derivative works is what makes me think it's a utopian ideal. The problem is you can't get the benefits without the cost. And all of the derivative works problems are political -- the issue is that companies don't want to (or can't for various reasons) give you their changes. Personally I view this as antisocial and shortsighted behaviour (when a company fails, the work in their fork is lost). Though to be honest, most proprietary changes aren't very good. The GPL is just one more (political) hiccup that gives an incentive for companies to contribute upstream -- in addition to general out-of-tree problems.

antirez 8y ago

I agree with the overall reasoning of Paul, and we are having the same conversations inside Redis Labs. For instance the reason why Redis remained BSD licensed is that, while it's odd that cloud providers are exploiting open source system software in this way, yet to look just at that does not capture the whole story. Open source software changed our world completely, so the real balance must factor in also what happened to IT because open source exists. Even what now is a problem for OSS producers, the cloud providers, is in some way a product of the fact that software was democratised in this way by the OSS movement (and note that without the cloud to productize OSS is harder). Personally even the fact I write software is because I installed Linux 23 years ago or alike. So the point is to also have something that is interesting enough and that can be released in a commercial license and is complementary to the original project. Because the part that needs to be commercial, must go totally commercial (it's a long story but AGPL for sure, and probably also other attempts including SSPL and Common Clause are not just confusing, they may not be enough). However what this requires is a very good balance between what's open and what not. In the case of Redis this is a bit a natural process because I'm very unwelcoming to a lot of things that users want because I feel they are not a fit. Proof is that for instance, two of my popular open source projects, that are linenoise and dump1090, are currently both mostly distributed via forks made by other people. So Redis Labs can just jump in and do a number of very useful things like graph database, CRDTs, on-disk support and so forth without any conflict of interests. Let's see what happens. Right now the trend is to distribute the non-open parts with source code available and with very few limitations for end users: if this works is great, and it looks like is the only way because it is very unlikely that users will have the need of something as a service if they do not use it already in some form. DISCLAIMER: This comment was written incrementally and modified several times adding things that came to mind while writing. About BSD,MIT,... vs CopyLeft. We can say what we want, but if we just stick to facts, MIT-alike licenses provide more freedom for the final user. If one would like to dig more I think that the canonical example would be the Linux kernel and asking questions about, what if it would be BSD licensed.

pauldix 8y ago
Yeah, I'd be interested in an analysis of open source projects that are copyleft licensed and successful with the "what if" question posed about if they were MIT or similar. I'm definitely not the person to put forward an educated opinion on those.

wwweston 8y ago

> If software is a process of evolution and continuously building on previous work, copyleft licenses represent an evolutionary dead end, while liberal licenses represent branches of the tree that can live and progress much longer. This strikes me as not quite right and a bit out of place for an essay that's otherwise pretty thoughtful. Copyleft is a niche or a branch, not a dead end. There's a fundamental question facing anyone approaching the economics of a software project (and the economics of many other kinds of projects too): how much of the value of the project do you try to control/capture vs how much do you try to share in an effort to multiply the value? Source licensing questions are a subset of this: how much of the value of the project lies in certain levels of control of the source vs the prospect of a community around the source. The copyleft licenses are one answer to the question: if the utility value of software developed by an active community around the source strictly exceeds the value of any one player controlling access to the source, control the source to maintain community property of contributions, but let anyone work out their answer to the value capture question via the utility of the software or their knowledge about it. It isn't the only answer and I think it's fair to say that not every useful piece of software can be developed or maintained on that model, which is why I'd say it's an adaptation to a niche. A niche is pretty different than a dead end, though. This also addresses some odd conceptions of copyleft being incompatible with improving ones own lot or based in premature adoption of Star Trek values.

pauldix 8y ago
Heh, the Star Trek thing might have been a bit of an overreach based on people's reactions, but let me see if I can restate the point I was trying to make with that little bit. Licenses like MIT give the most possible freedom, particularly with how derivative works are commercialized. Copyleft licenses limit the freedoms of derivative works by forcing them to be copyleft (although with some hacks and exceptions). This limitation means that options for creating a derivative commercial product from copyleft sources are very limited. If you are able to get around the copyleft restriction (like SaaS products developed on GPL and AGPL'd software) then you are able to build a commercial product. But if you want to ship that software to a customer in a licensed product or a piece of hardware, you won't be able to do it without exposing your entire source code to be copyleft. I've heard people argue that copyleft is better because it forces this opening of source on everyone. It's a utopian ideal that I think limits its utility, particularly with regard to derivative works.

stcredzero 8y ago

Ok, let’s get into licensing. Copyleft licenses like AGPL and SSPL have a weaker result in terms of overall benefit to society than liberal licenses like MIT and Apache2. You can take two interpretations on copyleft, which I’ll call “the crusader” or “the capitalist”. The problem with the "crusader" model, as practiced, is that it came with a "you're either with us, or you're against us" stance. This created a community subculture which encouraged the alienation of potential allies and served more to make the Free Software movement more of a hipster pose. It served more to make Free Software a kind of antipodean "unwalled" garden, where the barriers to entry also acted as a validation of the virtue signal. Don't get me wrong. Copyleft licenses have a place. It's just that the place is not "Uber alles."

Proven 8y ago
Personally I make an effort to not contribute to any freedom-limiting software (GPL 2.0 is already bad enough, but GPL 3 is way worse). I explicitly check for GPL 3 and make sure I don't help in any way. The alienation created by the crusader model is deliberate. It's meant to control and change, not to live and let live.

Proven 8y ago

> Copyleft is a restriction. This can't be emphasized enough, after an entire generation of users and developers has been raised listening to "fake license news" from the likes of Stallman.

Animats 8y ago

If Linux was MIT-licensed, there would be proprietary "Linux with Oracle extensions" and "Linux with Microsoft extensions". They'd cost money, wouldn't operate without the the closed source parts, and would be incompatible. Engulf, extend, devour.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nickpsecurity 8y ago
Oh no, it would've been worse from the fact that Microsoft and Oracle used BSD code in their proprietary OS's whose code they certainly didn't share. Plus, all the money they made let them fight against software freedoms with monopolistic schemes, lobbying, and lawsuits. It's much worse than just an open product with extensions.
- speedplane 8y ago
  This already exists... Android is MIT licensed and nearly every cell phone vendor has incompatible proprietary extensions.
  - nickpsecurity 8y ago
    It's Apache 2.0 and it did lead to incompatible, proprietary extensions: https://source.android.com/setup/start/licenses https://source.android.com/setup/start/licenses

guelo 8y ago

GPL was a mostly failed, idealistic attempt at creating a separate non-commercial hobbyist computing ecosystem. It's not a big surprise that corporate developers don't like non-commercial software that they're not allowed to use.

indymike 8y ago
Calling GPL a failure or non-commercial is to ignore the role of GPL software in the ISP, Hosting and cloud computing industries. For those of us writing commercial software, as the article points out, the GPL makes it very hard to create a license revenue driven business. Selling licenses is not the only model, but it is a proven one.
pritambaral 8y ago
This is way off-base. The GPL neither wanted to not has been able to restrict commercial profit from the works it's been used with. You also imply GPL prevents corporate developers from using GPL'ed software, which is patently untrue. The GPL allows any person or organisation to take software and do absolutely anything they want with it, for themselves, without any obligation. The GPL might have come out of a non-commercial hobbyist/hacker culture, but it certainly doesn't impose either practice.

xvilka 8y ago

I think it won't help them in the long run - people and companies will just switch to another software with friendlier license (or a new software will emerge).

heyjudy 8y ago

The challenges are: 0. Megacorps exploiting FOSS and not volunteering enough (a) money or (b) code back overall. 1. The limitations brought on everyone who's not a megacorp by authors trying to acheive 0a &| 0b. As such, there are some difficult &| uncool ways around this: i. A name-and-shame web app that everyone know about that impacts a company's sales and reputation if it cheats FOSS. ii. Going micropayment commercial with intrusive license auditing to verify compliance. iii. Begging harder from big companies that are known to abuse FOSS. PS: Before OSS was popular, shareware/freeware with code hidden like it was some sort of arcane secret magic much as scientists did before the modern era.

SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
But (0) is a completely neutral thing for most members of a FOSS community. Amazon starting up a new service won't stop me from merging code or change my (generally zero) income. It only hurts you if you're another company who also wants to exploit the software for profit.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ajross 8y ago

> Ok, let’s get into licensing. Copyleft licenses like AGPL and SSPL have a weaker result in terms of overall benefit to society than liberal licenses like MIT and Apache2. [...] They’re forcing a world view that everything should be free and shared like some sort of make-believe Star Trek future where money doesn’t exist. That's FUD right out of 1998. Sigh. Look, any attack on copyleft needs to start from a position of describing how any of the open source revolution of the last two decades happens without it. I mean, basically everything was driven by GPL software. Instead, this starts from a position of poop flinging by calling GPL proponents naive communists. I don't see that it gets any better. Skip.