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> an idealism that has given us software such as Linux No, Linux is GPL licensed, it's not a naive permissive license.
by ForHackernews 7y ago
> an idealism that has given us software such as Linux
No, Linux is GPL licensed, it's not a naive permissive license.
- detaro 7y agoMongo was AGPL.
- adamson 7y agoYes, but you’re still free to turn around and sell Linux as part of a SaaS offering as Amazon does. It saves you from someone surreptitiously forking your project and selling the fork without contributing back improvements to the public, but it doesn’t totally sidestep the issues in the article.
- ForHackernews 7y agoTrue, but SaaS didn't exist at the time Linux was invented, so it's hard to fault Torvalds for not foreseeing this particular issue. The broader point, I'd argue, is that the idealism behind many successful free software projects was tempered by realism in choosing licenses that compel contributing back to the community.
- lightedman 7y agoSaaS has been around since the 1960s