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Something which hasn't been discussed much in this kerfuffle is the role that copyleft can play in protecting projects from this kind of problem. The MIT licens
by ddevault 4y ago
Something which hasn't been discussed much in this kerfuffle is the role that copyleft can play in protecting projects from this kind of problem. The MIT license is the "default" for many people but it's honestly pretty irresponsible to use it without thinking these cases through.
I represent a similar project (which I shall leave unnamed) and we use copyleft licenses without asking for a copyright assignment from contributors. The result is that the project's copyright is legally held by its contributors and each one licenses their work to everyone else under copyleft terms, requiring everyone involved to commit to keeping it free and open source. Even the project leadership, as it were, is not allowed to take the code and run off with it. Changing the license would involve getting each contributor to agree to a new license, or rewriting the contributions from anyone who does not agree.
As the saying goes: show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome. Design your incentives with care to achieve the desired outcomes. If you make something valuable without considering this, someone will eventually try to take advantage of that value without you.
- nwellnhof 4y agoCopyleft has very little to do with this. The authors of a permissively licensed project keep their copyright as well, and nothing stops you from taking over a GPL-licensed project as a company as long as it stays open source. Copyleft only stops someone from distributing changes as closed source.
- ilyt 4y ago> Copyleft only stops someone from distributing changes as closed source. That "only" is the important part. Having to change label attached to it is annoying, but copyleft is crucial
- ddevault 4y ago>as long as it stays open source This is the important part.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pessimizer 4y ago> Copyleft only stops someone from distributing changes as closed source. Which is all we wanted?
- nwellnhof 4y agoThe original Open Letter was only about domains and trademarks.
- ilyt 4y agoPush for MIT/BSD licenses can be pretty much shortened to corporations wanting to use some work for free and by proxy developers wanting to make their corporate job easier. Which would be fine if not that they usually use disgusting rhetoric like trying to argue it's somehow less "free" to have license disallowing taking the freedoms away.
- halostatue 4y agoI chose MIT/BSD licences long before any corporation hired me. The GNU GPL is a fine licence (if you want tit-for-tat licensing, which I DO NOT) with a godawful unremovable political rant attached at the top. Fork the licence to remove the rant and it’s incompatible with the GNU GPL. Plus, I literally do not care what people do with the small libraries that I write. If I were making something bigger…I might have a different opinion.