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I was looking at it from the programmer's perspective. Specifically, from the perspective of someone who built something themselves and distributed it. From w
by godshatter 7y ago
I was looking at it from the programmer's perspective. Specifically, from the perspective of someone who built something themselves and distributed it.
From what I can tell, the user's freedoms (assuming no changes) are pretty much the same. They can use the software without worry.
- jeremyjh 7y agoThe user does NOT have the same freedoms under MIT because there is no obligation to release the sources you have modified and distributed as a binary. A user may also be a programmer but if they have no source their options are limited.
- simion314 7y agoYes, the direct users of teh MIT program have the freedoms, the issue is the project can be hijacked and made proprietary and then sold to the users. As an example the fact Webkit is opensource is because it was impossible to close source the KHTML fork.
- garmaine 7y agoIf I make a (A)GPL program, I can be certain that EVERY downstream user has access to the source code and the freedom to recompile, reuse, remix, etc. That is not the case with MIT, where any developer downstream may choose to re-license as they see fit. From a user's perspective, the rights are very, very different. When you choose a copyleft license, you are making a specific choice that downstream users should have their rights protected, even if that comes at the expense of the "freedom" of downstream developers--who are now prevented from doing anything which restricts user freedom.