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Even as an individual user, I try to avoid using software licensed under GPL or its derivatives. I'm against copyright laws, and any second that I have to spen

Even as an individual user, I try to avoid using software licensed under GPL or its derivatives. I'm against copyright laws, and any second that I have to spend thinking about how to comply with them is a second wasted to me. BSD and MIT make me waste the minimum practically possible amount of time. I like knowing that I have the freedom to not care about infringing on anyone's copyright as long as I only develop software using permissive licenses.

jkaplowitz 6y ago
BSD and MIT maximize freedom for developers, which seems to be your primary concern so that's totally understandable. You're right that they're much easier for developers to comply with than the GPL family. GPL and AGPL maximize freedom for both direct and indirect downstream users, such that users of any software derived from that GPL/AGPL software are guaranteed strong rights to be able to understand / modify / pay others to modify their software. BSD/MIT allow proprietary derivatives which withhold this freedom from users. Both are pretty valid concerns, even if they're opposed to each other. But for cases where you're a pure user and not a developer, there's no compliance hassle involved with either the BSD/MIT family of licenses or the GPL family.