4 ms·

As an open source project 'owner' my personal experience is similar i.e. nearly nobody of the companies contributes back. Often times you are not even allowed t

As an open source project 'owner' my personal experience is similar i.e. nearly nobody of the companies contributes back. Often times you are not even allowed to talk about their usage. But still, I think the permissive license we picked was the better choice. Especially after our company was formed and we want to use the project for ourself too the (A)GPL would make the community working together with this harder (CLA, dual licensing?) IMO a permissive license is better and easier for the developer and the GPL is better for the end user. But even the GPL does not grant you anything without a lawyer :) E.g. I tried to get the GPL source code from Waze (tried it multiple times!) and got a reply: "I've looked into your concern and determined that it needs some extra attention from our end." See also https://2jk.org/english/2014/03/27/israeli-waze-hit-with-gpl-class-action-lawsuit-plaintiff-requests-source-code/ https://2jk.org/english/2014/03/27/israeli-waze-hit-with-gpl... (btw: you can get the inofficial code from here https://github.com/maximuska/Freemap-waze https://github.com/maximuska/Freemap-waze)

goodpoint 4y ago
> IMO a permissive license is better and easier for the developer and the GPL is better for the end user No, as developers we use tons of software. We are users before being developers. As such, GPL protects developers as well.
bawolff 4y ago
> Especially after our company was formed and we want to use the project for ourself too the (A)GPL would make the community working together with this harder (CLA, dual licensing?) In this scenario, your company is the thing GPL is trying to protect your community devs from (i.e. the gpl is trying to stop a company from taking contributions donated on the condition they would be open-source, and selling them privately without compensation). You are basically saying the GPL makes it harder to do the thing the GPL was trying to stop.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  The GP wants to donate some software to the community, on the condition that he gets to use any derivative community work on his product. Anybody contributing to the code is clearly informed of that, and decides to do it out willfully. It's a perfectly reasonable arrangement that adds value to both the community and the GP, and that the GPL "protects against". So, yes, the GP's point stands in that there are uses for licenses other than the GPL. All of the complaints about they only being good for people creating proprietary software are true, they just completely miss the point.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    To clarify, i dont think that GP is morally wrong or anything (as long as they are upfront about what they are doing, although it can get morally questionable fast if they aren't careful). I guess the point i was trying to make is its weird to describe that as a flaw of the GPL when its basically the primary use case .
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      Oh, the GP is in a context of people strongly implying that any permissive license shouldn't be used at all. But if you take too long to reach it and forget the context, it does indeed sound like a weirdo complaining that the GPL is copyleft.
  - melagonster 4y ago
    If someone published his code under GPL, but then use it in himeself product, is this moral?
    - bawolff 4y ago
      I think yes, obviously. The morally questionable situation is where you publish code under GPL, allow community contributions on the code on the condition that the community contributors sign a document transfering copyright to you (without payment or anything like that) and then also use those community contributions in a closed source product you sell.
josephcsible 4y ago
> IMO a permissive license is better and easier for the developer and the GPL is better for the end user. A permissive license is only better and easier for developers of proprietary software. The GPL is better for developers of free software and for end users.
- nescioquid 4y ago
  I agree, though I think there's an irony in the mutual incompatibility of many FOSS licenses. For instance, try making a GPL project that depends on a data file licensed under Creative Commons. One's best bet in such a situation is to ask the rights holder to release to you under a compatible license, but people (and institutions) are generally reluctant to do so. Two permissive licenses, one headache for the FOSS dev.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
> But still, I think the permissive license we picked was the better choice. Especially after our company was formed and we want to use the project for ourself too the (A)GPL would make the community working together with this harder (CLA, dual licensing?) Regardless of license, most software projects are either community projects, or corporate projects, but not both. Corporations rarely see fit to invest in the development of a project they're using because some other chump is giving it away for free. And volunteer programmers rarely want to deal with submitting commits to a project with corporate managers who are focused on the needs of the organization and see volunteer programmers as out-of-the-loop nuisances. Whether you're a corporation open sourcing something to get free community labor, or a volunteer open sourcing something to get corporations to contribute, you'll probably be disappointed.
xani_ 4y ago
> IMO a permissive license is better and easier for the developer and the GPL is better for the end user. users don't care, they aint taking the code for changing. Arguably it also doesn't matter till you are corporation closing the code for profit. If all you do is OSS and are used by people that also release OSS, extra protection GPL gives are not useful. But of course real world is not that idealistic. And for that of course BSD/MIT is better. No facility for anyone to get anything out of you so you can take and take without ever giving back aside from occasional bug report and outrage over someone having a bug they didn't fix in project they are not paid to develop in the first place GPL gives one guarantee - that the code you give will not be closed down for money and used to save some corporation some dev-hours. Some devs don't like it because it is making their life difficult (and I'd also argue anything higher than LGPL for stuff like libraries is kinda pointless), but that's kinda the point.
- karussell 4y ago
  > GPL gives one guarantee GPL explicitly allows commercial usage. E.g. I take take your GPL code and create a SaaS around it and make a lot of money or I can create a consultancy service around your GPL code.

goodpoint 4y ago

> IMO a permissive license is better and easier for the developer and the GPL is better for the end user No, as developers we use tons of software. We are users before being developers. As such, GPL protects developers as well.

bawolff 4y ago

> Especially after our company was formed and we want to use the project for ourself too the (A)GPL would make the community working together with this harder (CLA, dual licensing?) In this scenario, your company is the thing GPL is trying to protect your community devs from (i.e. the gpl is trying to stop a company from taking contributions donated on the condition they would be open-source, and selling them privately without compensation). You are basically saying the GPL makes it harder to do the thing the GPL was trying to stop.

marcosdumay 4y ago
The GP wants to donate some software to the community, on the condition that he gets to use any derivative community work on his product. Anybody contributing to the code is clearly informed of that, and decides to do it out willfully. It's a perfectly reasonable arrangement that adds value to both the community and the GP, and that the GPL "protects against". So, yes, the GP's point stands in that there are uses for licenses other than the GPL. All of the complaints about they only being good for people creating proprietary software are true, they just completely miss the point.
- bawolff 4y ago
  To clarify, i dont think that GP is morally wrong or anything (as long as they are upfront about what they are doing, although it can get morally questionable fast if they aren't careful). I guess the point i was trying to make is its weird to describe that as a flaw of the GPL when its basically the primary use case .
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Oh, the GP is in a context of people strongly implying that any permissive license shouldn't be used at all. But if you take too long to reach it and forget the context, it does indeed sound like a weirdo complaining that the GPL is copyleft.
- melagonster 4y ago
  If someone published his code under GPL, but then use it in himeself product, is this moral?
  - bawolff 4y ago
    I think yes, obviously. The morally questionable situation is where you publish code under GPL, allow community contributions on the code on the condition that the community contributors sign a document transfering copyright to you (without payment or anything like that) and then also use those community contributions in a closed source product you sell.

josephcsible 4y ago

> IMO a permissive license is better and easier for the developer and the GPL is better for the end user. A permissive license is only better and easier for developers of proprietary software. The GPL is better for developers of free software and for end users.

nescioquid 4y ago
I agree, though I think there's an irony in the mutual incompatibility of many FOSS licenses. For instance, try making a GPL project that depends on a data file licensed under Creative Commons. One's best bet in such a situation is to ask the rights holder to release to you under a compatible license, but people (and institutions) are generally reluctant to do so. Two permissive licenses, one headache for the FOSS dev.

MichaelCollins 4y ago

> But still, I think the permissive license we picked was the better choice. Especially after our company was formed and we want to use the project for ourself too the (A)GPL would make the community working together with this harder (CLA, dual licensing?) Regardless of license, most software projects are either community projects, or corporate projects, but not both. Corporations rarely see fit to invest in the development of a project they're using because some other chump is giving it away for free. And volunteer programmers rarely want to deal with submitting commits to a project with corporate managers who are focused on the needs of the organization and see volunteer programmers as out-of-the-loop nuisances. Whether you're a corporation open sourcing something to get free community labor, or a volunteer open sourcing something to get corporations to contribute, you'll probably be disappointed.

xani_ 4y ago

> IMO a permissive license is better and easier for the developer and the GPL is better for the end user. users don't care, they aint taking the code for changing. Arguably it also doesn't matter till you are corporation closing the code for profit. If all you do is OSS and are used by people that also release OSS, extra protection GPL gives are not useful. But of course real world is not that idealistic. And for that of course BSD/MIT is better. No facility for anyone to get anything out of you so you can take and take without ever giving back aside from occasional bug report and outrage over someone having a bug they didn't fix in project they are not paid to develop in the first place GPL gives one guarantee - that the code you give will not be closed down for money and used to save some corporation some dev-hours. Some devs don't like it because it is making their life difficult (and I'd also argue anything higher than LGPL for stuff like libraries is kinda pointless), but that's kinda the point.

karussell 4y ago
> GPL gives one guarantee GPL explicitly allows commercial usage. E.g. I take take your GPL code and create a SaaS around it and make a lot of money or I can create a consultancy service around your GPL code.