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This is the closest anyone has ever come to convincing me to use GPL instead of MIT license. But I still want to support small developers with anything I produ

This is the closest anyone has ever come to convincing me to use GPL instead of MIT license. But I still want to support small developers with anything I produce for fun, and I'm not willing to give that up to spite the big developers. For instance, I wrote a small class to load OBJ files in Unity because I needed it for an idea. I went ahead and put it on Github for others that need it, too. I could easily see someone having an idea similar to mine that needed that and couldn't find it out there. (I think there are more libraries like that now, though.) I wanted them to feel comfortable using it, even if they eventually make money with their game. If a big corp uses that code, too, that sucks. But there's no good way to draw that line in a license, so I didn't. Having said that, in the future I could see releasing some software that I don't think anyone should profit from, and in that case I'd GPL it. Previously, I'd have just defaulted to the same MIT license. I'm just not sure what that'd be yet.

enriquto 5y ago
> This is the closest anyone has ever come to convincing me to use GPL instead of MIT license. > But I still want to support small developers with anything I produce for fun, and I'm not willing to give that up to spite the big developers. Another line of thought that may help you choose a license: Do not think only about other developers. Think about the final users of your code that will be running your algorithms on their computers. The GPL protects the right of these users to see and modify the code they run (your code). So-called permissive licenses, on the other hand, let middlemen to strip this right from your users. Users of your code are in fact freer thanks to copyleft licenses.
dgb23 5y ago
Just to be sure: GPL doesn’t prevent anyone from selling.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  No, but it does force them to GPL their own code if they do. And that's a no-go for most companies.
  - enriquto 5y ago
    > No, but it does force them to GPL their own code if they do. And that's a no-go for most companies. There's many companies who release source code. I don't know enough to say if that makes the word "most" in your sentence false or not. Anyways, a company using GPL code need not release all their own code. Just their modifications to that particular GPL program. And then again, only if they do intend to distribute the modified program.

enriquto 5y ago

> This is the closest anyone has ever come to convincing me to use GPL instead of MIT license. > But I still want to support small developers with anything I produce for fun, and I'm not willing to give that up to spite the big developers. Another line of thought that may help you choose a license: Do not think only about other developers. Think about the final users of your code that will be running your algorithms on their computers. The GPL protects the right of these users to see and modify the code they run (your code). So-called permissive licenses, on the other hand, let middlemen to strip this right from your users. Users of your code are in fact freer thanks to copyleft licenses.

dgb23 5y ago

Just to be sure: GPL doesn’t prevent anyone from selling.

wccrawford 5y ago
No, but it does force them to GPL their own code if they do. And that's a no-go for most companies.
- enriquto 5y ago
  > No, but it does force them to GPL their own code if they do. And that's a no-go for most companies. There's many companies who release source code. I don't know enough to say if that makes the word "most" in your sentence false or not. Anyways, a company using GPL code need not release all their own code. Just their modifications to that particular GPL program. And then again, only if they do intend to distribute the modified program.