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Could we say that "virality" is reversed with the MIT license compared to the GPL? With the MIT license, additional license agreements can hamper the distributi

Could we say that "virality" is reversed with the MIT license compared to the GPL? With the MIT license, additional license agreements can hamper the distribution of the source code or make it useless to the user. Examples: Android AOSP and the Google services, VS code (this article). To the contrary the open-sourced code is still useful to its owner: reputation, occasional free bug-fixes. In the end the MIT license is used by corporations to gain market-shares and sell proprietary SW, hence the reversed virality.

cryptonector 4y ago
GPL also allows additional license agreements. This is not a fault of the MIT license. You have to understand the totality of the licensing on some piece of open source to understand the implications. > In the end the MIT license is used by corporations to gain market-shares and sell proprietary SW, hence the reversed virality. Permissively-licensed open source is often used in proprietary products, yes. So what? Often the author(s) of the open source version don't mind and/or want that to be possible -- it's a perfectly legitimate choice for them to make. There seems to be a very judgmental vein in GPL fan thinking that authors who choose permissive licenses are at fault for not all open source being copyleft, and that those authors are "bad". The choice of license is always a "business" decision, even when it's made by an individual acting on their own behalf and not a corporation's!