5 ms·
Why would someone selling your code make it pointless to contribute to open source software? All the permissive open source licenses allow other people to sell
by miloignis 4y ago
Why would someone selling your code make it pointless to contribute to open source software? All the permissive open source licenses allow other people to sell your code anyway!
I'm not saying what Microsoft did was right at all, but I don't think it massively changes the dynamics of permissive (or even a decent bit of copyleft) open source development.
You contribute to open source because you want open source software to be better for you and for others, and Microsoft's use of it doesn't really affect that equation much (to me, at least).
If, on the other hand, someone was contributing to copyleft software because they dislike proprietary software & the corporations behind it, I could see this affecting their decision making, but even in this mindset, what's the other option? If your goal is FOSS and user-modifiable code, not contributing and or not open-sourcing your code is worse than Microsoft taking bits of it! The best strategy for this perspective to me is to remove all your code from GitHub, put it up on SourceHut or something self-hosted, and tell others to do the same (and don't buy Copilot, and tell others!)
- w4ffl35 4y ago> you want open source software to be better for you and for others tell that to M$ who is making $100 per user for that free labor.
- miloignis 4y agoI don't understand this retort -how does M$ making $100 per user for free labor in any way affect users of your contributed FOSS code? My use of KDenLive, Blender, Gimp, or OBS isn't affected at all by the existence of scamware rip-off versions on the internet.
- w4ffl35 4y agowhy bother having copyrights at all?
- miloignis 4y agoAgain, I'm not saying Microsoft is right - I think they're wrong - but Open Source would do just fine without any copyrights. Indeed, some great open source software is fully in the public domain (SQLite, for instance!) with all copyright explicitly waived. The lack of copyright doesn't affect me using SQLite at all, and I am very grateful for its existence. I generally license my code under very permissive licenses, and would go full public-domain myself if not for worry about it being ineffective in different jurisdictions, also wanting to give patent licenses, etc.
- w4ffl35 4y agoI take your point - NASA's github code is public domain for example. But we still need to respect existing copyrights and its very disheartening (but not unexpected) to see Microsoft and Github fail in that regard
- b3morales 4y agoSource code copyrights are the foundation that open-source licenses stand on, in the legal reality we occupy. In other worlds, there are probably better alternatives. But if Microsoft and GitHub would object to their own copyrighted code being used to train "FSFpilot" (and I would bet they would) then they can't use my code for their project either, not without following the license under which I gave them access to it.
- w4ffl35 4y agoexactly
- b3morales 4y ago> All the permissive open source licenses allow other people to sell your code anyway! ...with attribution. Which Copilot does not provide.