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I disagree. Work on permissively licensed software typically has the net effect of decreasing global freedom by reducing the costs of corporations to produce pr

I disagree. Work on permissively licensed software typically has the net effect of decreasing global freedom by reducing the costs of corporations to produce proprietary software. I try to avoid contributing to permissively-licensed software when possible, and I prefer to co-operate with businesses that use free software to avoid vendor lock-in as much as possible. Why should we all do free work for corporations? At least with the GPL you can negotiate a commercial license in exchange for money, but with a permissive license you forfeit your ability to do that. This article accurately sums up my point of view: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses/ https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuc... Also, the GPL does not require you to share the source code for programs that you do not distribute outside your company.

trasz 4y ago
Corporations that don’t want to share code don’t share it even when copyleft.
- cowtools 4y ago
  From the opinion article I linked: >At the end of the day, though, what does it matter? What is a totally unenforced GPL? It's just a Cuck License—Isn't that what license cucks want? So why should they care? At their very best, BSD and MIT licenses are only what GPL might be at its very worst. >The GPL is a permanent liability for any company that crosses it. Some companies might be so bold to lift GPL code and hide it, but there is always a risk and a worry that prevents its general violation.
  - eredengrin 4y ago
    Those comments are unrelated. The point they were making is that if companies don't want to release source, they will either use a permissively licensed open source project as the base, or they will roll their own (probably lower quality) proprietary version. Or they'll pull an nvidia and release some hacky shim/workaround that breaks all the time and leads to bad user experience.
    - cowtools 4y ago
      > they will either use a permissively licensed open source project as the base which will be less feasible if people don't contribute to permissive projects in the first place, and basically serve as free labor for corporations to take advantage of. > or they will roll their own (probably lower quality) proprietary version this will cost them time and money to produce, putting them at a disadvantage compared to their competitors. >Or they'll pull an nvidia and release some hacky shim/workaround that breaks all the time and leads to bad user experience. nvidia can pull that off with linux because pushover operating systems like BSD give them the leverage to make those sorts of demands of the linux ecosystem. If linux sues nvidia or makes the driver/shim incompatible that's fine by nvidia- they will be mostly content with to tell their userbase to switch over to BSD so they can distribute a closed-source driver. They can do this to the extent that BSD is a workable replacement for linux, so all work on BSD is really just leverage against the linux GPL. If there were no feasible permissive competitors to linux, then linux developers would be quite free to make demands of companies who would be forced to comply with the GPL or write their own OS from scratch.
      - eredengrin 4y ago
        > nvidia can pull that off with linux because pushover operating systems like BSD give them the leverage to make those sorts of demands of the linux ecosystem That is quite the assertion given that FreeBSD is much smaller than linux, which is already much smaller than windows. Honestly kind of laughable, FreeBSD is so small and insignificant, it's just an afterthought of an afterthought for companies, the only reason those drivers exist is because it's a minimal amount of extra work for them since they already have the linux drivers. It would take a massive amount of work and nurturing to create a FreeBSD community large enough for it to become a palatable option for most linux users. Not to mention FreeBSD doesn't even have CUDA support, so nvidia themselves would have to do extra work to make it happen (probably other features too, that's just the main one that bit me). As for shims, linux already breaks them all the time, that's why everyone hates nvidia on linux. But that doesn't stop nvidia from doing it. > If there were no feasible permissive competitors to linux, then linux developers would be quite free to make demands of companies who would be forced to comply with the GPL or write their own OS from scratch. nvidia is already complying with the GPL. And no, if they wanted to skip shims they wouldn't be forced to write their own OS, they would just force their users to use windows. This comparison makes no sense.
systemvoltage 4y ago
It is a fact that many companies from startups to corporations do not have the flexibility of working in open source. There is nothing to disagree here. You're shoving in GPL ideology where none was asked for. No one is asking to do free work for corporations; this is a flimsy straw man. You're welcome to do what you feel, I was stating the fact that FreeBSD has done the world a lot of good. That's hard to refute even in the worst of assumptions. And that's not saying anything about GPL. It has its place.
inopinatus 4y ago
Folks that mindfully contribute BSD- and MIT-licensed software do not share the perspective that they are performing unpaid labor for corporations. I personally regard copyleft as a severe curtailing of options and equate it with being forced to adopt a narrow, ideological worldview. Worse, the GPL perpetuates the fundamental atrocity of intellectual property law, by hacking it, and therefore intrinsically depending on it; in contrast, the BSD and MIT licenses are mostly a liability waiver under an assertion of attribution, ultimately creations more of necessity than ideology. In the context of abjuring exploitative corporations, I hear an echo of trade unionism, a movement often oblivious to its own reinforcement of capitalism, again by depending upon the thing it purports to confront; few entities are more aligned with the moral sentiments of Adam Smith than a trade union engaged in collective bargaining. And so it is with the copyleft licenses and their implicit support for enforceable intellectual property rights. The article linked appears to be derogatory, emotive, riddled with false equivalences, and relies on invective as a substitute for rhetoric. Rather than finding it compelling, it think it describes a myopic, narcissistic view of both intellectual advancement and the value of unfettered contribution.

trasz 4y ago

Corporations that don’t want to share code don’t share it even when copyleft.

cowtools 4y ago
From the opinion article I linked: >At the end of the day, though, what does it matter? What is a totally unenforced GPL? It's just a Cuck License—Isn't that what license cucks want? So why should they care? At their very best, BSD and MIT licenses are only what GPL might be at its very worst. >The GPL is a permanent liability for any company that crosses it. Some companies might be so bold to lift GPL code and hide it, but there is always a risk and a worry that prevents its general violation.
- eredengrin 4y ago
  Those comments are unrelated. The point they were making is that if companies don't want to release source, they will either use a permissively licensed open source project as the base, or they will roll their own (probably lower quality) proprietary version. Or they'll pull an nvidia and release some hacky shim/workaround that breaks all the time and leads to bad user experience.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    > they will either use a permissively licensed open source project as the base which will be less feasible if people don't contribute to permissive projects in the first place, and basically serve as free labor for corporations to take advantage of. > or they will roll their own (probably lower quality) proprietary version this will cost them time and money to produce, putting them at a disadvantage compared to their competitors. >Or they'll pull an nvidia and release some hacky shim/workaround that breaks all the time and leads to bad user experience. nvidia can pull that off with linux because pushover operating systems like BSD give them the leverage to make those sorts of demands of the linux ecosystem. If linux sues nvidia or makes the driver/shim incompatible that's fine by nvidia- they will be mostly content with to tell their userbase to switch over to BSD so they can distribute a closed-source driver. They can do this to the extent that BSD is a workable replacement for linux, so all work on BSD is really just leverage against the linux GPL. If there were no feasible permissive competitors to linux, then linux developers would be quite free to make demands of companies who would be forced to comply with the GPL or write their own OS from scratch.
    - eredengrin 4y ago
      > nvidia can pull that off with linux because pushover operating systems like BSD give them the leverage to make those sorts of demands of the linux ecosystem That is quite the assertion given that FreeBSD is much smaller than linux, which is already much smaller than windows. Honestly kind of laughable, FreeBSD is so small and insignificant, it's just an afterthought of an afterthought for companies, the only reason those drivers exist is because it's a minimal amount of extra work for them since they already have the linux drivers. It would take a massive amount of work and nurturing to create a FreeBSD community large enough for it to become a palatable option for most linux users. Not to mention FreeBSD doesn't even have CUDA support, so nvidia themselves would have to do extra work to make it happen (probably other features too, that's just the main one that bit me). As for shims, linux already breaks them all the time, that's why everyone hates nvidia on linux. But that doesn't stop nvidia from doing it. > If there were no feasible permissive competitors to linux, then linux developers would be quite free to make demands of companies who would be forced to comply with the GPL or write their own OS from scratch. nvidia is already complying with the GPL. And no, if they wanted to skip shims they wouldn't be forced to write their own OS, they would just force their users to use windows. This comparison makes no sense.

systemvoltage 4y ago

It is a fact that many companies from startups to corporations do not have the flexibility of working in open source. There is nothing to disagree here. You're shoving in GPL ideology where none was asked for. No one is asking to do free work for corporations; this is a flimsy straw man. You're welcome to do what you feel, I was stating the fact that FreeBSD has done the world a lot of good. That's hard to refute even in the worst of assumptions. And that's not saying anything about GPL. It has its place.

inopinatus 4y ago

Folks that mindfully contribute BSD- and MIT-licensed software do not share the perspective that they are performing unpaid labor for corporations. I personally regard copyleft as a severe curtailing of options and equate it with being forced to adopt a narrow, ideological worldview. Worse, the GPL perpetuates the fundamental atrocity of intellectual property law, by hacking it, and therefore intrinsically depending on it; in contrast, the BSD and MIT licenses are mostly a liability waiver under an assertion of attribution, ultimately creations more of necessity than ideology. In the context of abjuring exploitative corporations, I hear an echo of trade unionism, a movement often oblivious to its own reinforcement of capitalism, again by depending upon the thing it purports to confront; few entities are more aligned with the moral sentiments of Adam Smith than a trade union engaged in collective bargaining. And so it is with the copyleft licenses and their implicit support for enforceable intellectual property rights. The article linked appears to be derogatory, emotive, riddled with false equivalences, and relies on invective as a substitute for rhetoric. Rather than finding it compelling, it think it describes a myopic, narcissistic view of both intellectual advancement and the value of unfettered contribution.