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I sense that you haven’t fully internalized the idea of some of the popular open source licenses. Such licenses are a bit like letting go of a balloon. Most ti

I sense that you haven’t fully internalized the idea of some of the popular open source licenses. Such licenses are a bit like letting go of a balloon. Most times, the balloon will float away and pop on some tree with no benefit to anyone. In a few rare occasions, your obnoxious neighborhood kid will grab that balloon and play with it all afternoon. You might not like that the kid is enjoying your balloon but no right minded person would expect that the kid’s parents recompense you for the balloon you let go willingly. TBF, not long ago, someone posted on HN that AWS simply used their open source ware without even a thank you. It created quite a bit of noise on HN, so your opinion isn’t too far outside the norm.

willcipriano 5y ago
It's more like setting up a little reading library. Have you seen those? People build little dollhouses and fill them with books with the idea that anyone can grab one and donate back when they can. It's mostly to encourage children to read. Now imagine Amazon comes by and lists the books in the reading library on it's website for sale. You offered them for free after all. Further they are knocking on your door obnoxiously asking you when you are going to get a particular book in stock, since they have a customer who wants it.
trelane 5y ago
I won't comment on the other licenses, but the point of the GPL is _user empowerment._ The origin is that Stallmann had a broken printer but was not able to fix it due to it having a proprietary driver.[1] It's not at all about ensuring support (or preventing profit). It's all about ensuring the end user (even if that end user is 37 steps away from the original author!) has _all_ the rights to do anything with the software that they would like. Quite a lot of the time the user may not be able or want to use the rights granted them, but that doesn't make those rights useless. Indeed, they serve an important function, see the various offshoots of that early Linksys WRT code! It saddens me greatly that so many have lost sight of this. [1] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer-story201d-redux-a-testimonial-about-the-injustice-of-proprietary-firmware https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer-story201...

willcipriano 5y ago

It's more like setting up a little reading library. Have you seen those? People build little dollhouses and fill them with books with the idea that anyone can grab one and donate back when they can. It's mostly to encourage children to read. Now imagine Amazon comes by and lists the books in the reading library on it's website for sale. You offered them for free after all. Further they are knocking on your door obnoxiously asking you when you are going to get a particular book in stock, since they have a customer who wants it.

trelane 5y ago

I won't comment on the other licenses, but the point of the GPL is _user empowerment._ The origin is that Stallmann had a broken printer but was not able to fix it due to it having a proprietary driver.[1] It's not at all about ensuring support (or preventing profit). It's all about ensuring the end user (even if that end user is 37 steps away from the original author!) has _all_ the rights to do anything with the software that they would like. Quite a lot of the time the user may not be able or want to use the rights granted them, but that doesn't make those rights useless. Indeed, they serve an important function, see the various offshoots of that early Linksys WRT code! It saddens me greatly that so many have lost sight of this. [1] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer-story201d-redux-a-testimonial-about-the-injustice-of-proprietary-firmware https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer-story201...