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Nobody is "afraid" of copyleft, that's a rhetorical device you're using to discredit those who disagree with you. People make informed decisions that copyleft r

Nobody is "afraid" of copyleft, that's a rhetorical device you're using to discredit those who disagree with you. People make informed decisions that copyleft requirements don't work for them, and they have every right to do so. I won't buy a house in an HOA. I'm not afraid of HOAs, I just have better things to do with my time than keep up with their demands.

msla 4y ago
Some entities are afraid copyleft would lock them out of profitable business models, and forbid them from using libre software developers as unpaid labor. I don't want to be unpaid labor, I don't want people to recast being unpaid labor in terms of promoting freedom, and I damned well don't want people calling the licenses that keep me from being unpaid labor "fascist" as linked to down-thread from here in this very discussion. I just had a back-and-forth with someone who outright lied about the legal enforceability of the GPL and it's all beginning to leave a nasty taste in my mouth. The BSD/MIT world is good, but some of its boosters are beginning to look like thugs for companies that profit off of unpaid labor. Edit since I can't add new replies for some reason: The anti-copyleft FUD I'm talking about is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34756580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34756580
- roarcher 4y ago
  > Some entities are afraid copyleft would lock them out of profitable business models It would lock them out of profitable business models, so they make a perfectly rational decision, as a business, to not use it. You can call that fear if you like, and I can call that "abuse of semantics" :) > I don't want to be unpaid labor, I don't want people to recast being unpaid labor in terms of promoting freedom, and I damned well don't want people calling the licenses that keep me from being unpaid labor "fascist" as they did down-thread from here in this very discussion. That's completely fair. If you develop open source code and you want to license it as copyleft, go ahead. It's your code. The flip side is that if I develop an open source project, I'm free to make it MIT or whatever because I think the contributions of large companies to my project are valuable. Yes, they can make enhancements and not share them with me. But in practice, they will often merge them into my project because maintaining their own fork is expensive. On the other hand, if I have to make my code copyleft because it uses your code, they will almost certainly not use or contribute to my code at all, because that would require theirs to be copyleft as well. Therefore I don't use or contribute to your code. My decision not to use copyleft code isn't based on fear. It's because I know it will take my project in a direction I don't want it to go, and make it unusable for people who I would like to use it. As for being unpaid labor, that's a personal choice as well. I don't care about it, personally. I'm working on my project either way, because I want to. It's no skin off my nose if somebody else finds a way to make money from it. The minute working on it becomes a burden, I'm free to stop.
  - msla 4y ago
    I'm fine with people not using copyleft licenses. I'm fine with people stating they don't use copyleft licenses. I'm not fine with people spreading FUD about copyleft licenses. I'm, in a broader sense, not fine with people spreading FUD that Just So Happens to align with the business interests of companies.
    - roarcher 4y ago
      Then I don't think we disagree on anything. My only objection was to the use of the word "afraid", as if we're all either irrational or brainwashed and there aren't real practical issues with copyleft in certain situations. In short, you're arguing against anti-copyleft FUD, and I'm arguing against anti-non-copyleft FUD. Both are important for a FUD-free discussion.
    - burntsushi 4y ago
      This entire thread was kicked off by someone grossly mischaracterizing the situation, right? Look: >>> I suppose that the removal of this freedom is accidental, because it was a nice thing. >> Not necessarily. Some people prefer the MIT/BSD/ISC family of licenses over GPL. > Most of us have employers who are afraid of copyleft. That has made us afraid of copyleft, because we feel like our job is threatened by copyleft. There's no anti-copyleft FUD here. All that's here is someone assuming someone else isn't a fan of copyleft because of "fear."
- trasz3 4y ago
  GPL doesn’t make you any less an unpaid labour. In fact the whole RedHat business model is about profiting off software written by people you don’t pay.
  - msla 4y ago
    I disagree with this: Red Hat makes money off support, not taking open source code, making a few additions, and taking the whole shebang proprietary without giving anything back.
    - trasz3 4y ago
      Off support for software written by someone else. That’s the point: it’s much cheaper than selling support for their own software, because they don’t need to pay for development.
- arp242 4y ago
  > I just had a back-and-forth with someone who outright lied Good heavens, you're still going on about this two days later. There was a disagreement. No one "lied". This is not appropriate behaviour. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
sophacles 4y ago
The big difference with this analogy being: the HOA is an active entity that can change the rules. If you take some GPL2 code and use it, the license doesnt change - if it's gplv2 or later and someone distributes it gplv3, it doesn't change for you, etc.
- roarcher 4y ago
  I knew I'd get called out for the HOA analogy lol. My point wasn't that HOAs are similar to copyleft code, that's taking the analogy much further than it was intended. My point is only that people are free to make decisions about what works for them. Calling someone "afraid" because they opt out of something is hyperbolic and counterproductive. Here's another analogy: I ate eggs instead of cereal for breakfast. I did this because I wanted protein and not carbs, not because I'm afraid of cereal. Likewise, I just don't want to do the things that copyleft requires, so I use MIT and the like instead.

msla 4y ago

Some entities are afraid copyleft would lock them out of profitable business models, and forbid them from using libre software developers as unpaid labor. I don't want to be unpaid labor, I don't want people to recast being unpaid labor in terms of promoting freedom, and I damned well don't want people calling the licenses that keep me from being unpaid labor "fascist" as linked to down-thread from here in this very discussion. I just had a back-and-forth with someone who outright lied about the legal enforceability of the GPL and it's all beginning to leave a nasty taste in my mouth. The BSD/MIT world is good, but some of its boosters are beginning to look like thugs for companies that profit off of unpaid labor. Edit since I can't add new replies for some reason: The anti-copyleft FUD I'm talking about is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34756580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34756580

roarcher 4y ago
> Some entities are afraid copyleft would lock them out of profitable business models It would lock them out of profitable business models, so they make a perfectly rational decision, as a business, to not use it. You can call that fear if you like, and I can call that "abuse of semantics" :) > I don't want to be unpaid labor, I don't want people to recast being unpaid labor in terms of promoting freedom, and I damned well don't want people calling the licenses that keep me from being unpaid labor "fascist" as they did down-thread from here in this very discussion. That's completely fair. If you develop open source code and you want to license it as copyleft, go ahead. It's your code. The flip side is that if I develop an open source project, I'm free to make it MIT or whatever because I think the contributions of large companies to my project are valuable. Yes, they can make enhancements and not share them with me. But in practice, they will often merge them into my project because maintaining their own fork is expensive. On the other hand, if I have to make my code copyleft because it uses your code, they will almost certainly not use or contribute to my code at all, because that would require theirs to be copyleft as well. Therefore I don't use or contribute to your code. My decision not to use copyleft code isn't based on fear. It's because I know it will take my project in a direction I don't want it to go, and make it unusable for people who I would like to use it. As for being unpaid labor, that's a personal choice as well. I don't care about it, personally. I'm working on my project either way, because I want to. It's no skin off my nose if somebody else finds a way to make money from it. The minute working on it becomes a burden, I'm free to stop.
- msla 4y ago
  I'm fine with people not using copyleft licenses. I'm fine with people stating they don't use copyleft licenses. I'm not fine with people spreading FUD about copyleft licenses. I'm, in a broader sense, not fine with people spreading FUD that Just So Happens to align with the business interests of companies.
  - roarcher 4y ago
    Then I don't think we disagree on anything. My only objection was to the use of the word "afraid", as if we're all either irrational or brainwashed and there aren't real practical issues with copyleft in certain situations. In short, you're arguing against anti-copyleft FUD, and I'm arguing against anti-non-copyleft FUD. Both are important for a FUD-free discussion.
  - burntsushi 4y ago
    This entire thread was kicked off by someone grossly mischaracterizing the situation, right? Look: >>> I suppose that the removal of this freedom is accidental, because it was a nice thing. >> Not necessarily. Some people prefer the MIT/BSD/ISC family of licenses over GPL. > Most of us have employers who are afraid of copyleft. That has made us afraid of copyleft, because we feel like our job is threatened by copyleft. There's no anti-copyleft FUD here. All that's here is someone assuming someone else isn't a fan of copyleft because of "fear."
trasz3 4y ago
GPL doesn’t make you any less an unpaid labour. In fact the whole RedHat business model is about profiting off software written by people you don’t pay.
- msla 4y ago
  I disagree with this: Red Hat makes money off support, not taking open source code, making a few additions, and taking the whole shebang proprietary without giving anything back.
  - trasz3 4y ago
    Off support for software written by someone else. That’s the point: it’s much cheaper than selling support for their own software, because they don’t need to pay for development.
arp242 4y ago
> I just had a back-and-forth with someone who outright lied Good heavens, you're still going on about this two days later. There was a disagreement. No one "lied". This is not appropriate behaviour. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sophacles 4y ago

The big difference with this analogy being: the HOA is an active entity that can change the rules. If you take some GPL2 code and use it, the license doesnt change - if it's gplv2 or later and someone distributes it gplv3, it doesn't change for you, etc.

roarcher 4y ago
I knew I'd get called out for the HOA analogy lol. My point wasn't that HOAs are similar to copyleft code, that's taking the analogy much further than it was intended. My point is only that people are free to make decisions about what works for them. Calling someone "afraid" because they opt out of something is hyperbolic and counterproductive. Here's another analogy: I ate eggs instead of cereal for breakfast. I did this because I wanted protein and not carbs, not because I'm afraid of cereal. Likewise, I just don't want to do the things that copyleft requires, so I use MIT and the like instead.