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what the FSF hopes for is that if there is enough GPL-type licensed critical software which self-perpetuates free software then free software will become by far

what the FSF hopes for is that if there is enough GPL-type licensed critical software which self-perpetuates free software then free software will become by far the most dominant paradigm. in this sense it is really not hard to see why the license change in the rust rewrite of GNU coreutils is going to become the most dominant issue for FSF. screaming about technical merrits makes no sense >Continuation has nothing todo with the license but with interest of developers see -> Hurd i think developer interest has far more to do with technical viablity of a project than license choice. besides, as in all software some projects fail, some succeed, and some are just beginning

nix23 5y ago
>why the license change in the rust rewrite of GNU coreutils is going to become the most dominant issue for FSF Why is that a problem? There was already toybox (BSD), muslc (MIT), llvm (UIUC (BSD-style)). The dominant issue the FSF has is that they are no technically interested anymore but politically, and so no one need's them, no one wants them. And listening to Stallman is really boring, the last time he was kind of self-aware was with the Religion of Emacs, since then just repetition and being rude to interviewers and trying to trick devs (Linus and the GPLv3) BTW: I am NOT talking about the GNU project, just the FSF
- medo-bear 5y ago
  >Why is that a problem? simple. imagine: you value free software; you invest a lot of effort to make a really important critical piece of software; you license it under MIT; some company uses your software as a critical component, develops a lot of software on top of it, keeps the source closed, makes massive profit for itself, dominates the market and becomes a monopoly, all thanks to your critical component. now the question is: are you pissed off? if you are not, choose MIT. if you are pissed off choose a self-perpetuating copyleft license
  - nix23 5y ago
    >all thanks to your critical component Like to give a real world example for that? Or is it just theory?
    - medo-bear 5y ago
      sure. i know hedgefunds and banks that critically relly on a lot of permissive-licensed software and develop heavily on that code base. conversely, they wouldn't touch copyleft software with a 10 ft pole one of the other posters also mentioned CUDA's reliance on LLVM. i think that is a very good example also
      - nix23 5y ago
        So you think they would choose GPL-Code because that one component is so immensely good that you can take over the world?
        medo-bear 5y ago
        take the example of nvidia and their use of llvm in nvcc[0]. if llvm used a copyleft license, nvidia would either need to invest into an effort to replace llvm (a huge undertaking), or have cuda released under a free license. given the importance of cuda in parallel data computation, as well as nvidia's monopoly in the machine learning community, i think a copyleft license would have made a world of difference [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_CUDA_Compiler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_CUDA_Compiler
        nix23 5y ago
        >nvidia would either need to invest into an effort to replace llvm No they would buy a license for one of the hundreds proprietary compilers, and you will eat their dogfood like you do today with cuda itself. >or have cuda released under a free license. Dreamer...it's nvidia....you know the ones with the "driver" that runs with the GPLv2 kernel.
        5y ago

nix23 5y ago

>why the license change in the rust rewrite of GNU coreutils is going to become the most dominant issue for FSF Why is that a problem? There was already toybox (BSD), muslc (MIT), llvm (UIUC (BSD-style)). The dominant issue the FSF has is that they are no technically interested anymore but politically, and so no one need's them, no one wants them. And listening to Stallman is really boring, the last time he was kind of self-aware was with the Religion of Emacs, since then just repetition and being rude to interviewers and trying to trick devs (Linus and the GPLv3) BTW: I am NOT talking about the GNU project, just the FSF

medo-bear 5y ago
>Why is that a problem? simple. imagine: you value free software; you invest a lot of effort to make a really important critical piece of software; you license it under MIT; some company uses your software as a critical component, develops a lot of software on top of it, keeps the source closed, makes massive profit for itself, dominates the market and becomes a monopoly, all thanks to your critical component. now the question is: are you pissed off? if you are not, choose MIT. if you are pissed off choose a self-perpetuating copyleft license
- nix23 5y ago
  >all thanks to your critical component Like to give a real world example for that? Or is it just theory?
  - medo-bear 5y ago
    sure. i know hedgefunds and banks that critically relly on a lot of permissive-licensed software and develop heavily on that code base. conversely, they wouldn't touch copyleft software with a 10 ft pole one of the other posters also mentioned CUDA's reliance on LLVM. i think that is a very good example also
    - nix23 5y ago
      So you think they would choose GPL-Code because that one component is so immensely good that you can take over the world?
      - medo-bear 5y ago
        take the example of nvidia and their use of llvm in nvcc[0]. if llvm used a copyleft license, nvidia would either need to invest into an effort to replace llvm (a huge undertaking), or have cuda released under a free license. given the importance of cuda in parallel data computation, as well as nvidia's monopoly in the machine learning community, i think a copyleft license would have made a world of difference [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_CUDA_Compiler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_CUDA_Compiler
        nix23 5y ago
        >nvidia would either need to invest into an effort to replace llvm No they would buy a license for one of the hundreds proprietary compilers, and you will eat their dogfood like you do today with cuda itself. >or have cuda released under a free license. Dreamer...it's nvidia....you know the ones with the "driver" that runs with the GPLv2 kernel.
        5y ago