6 ms·

This is why copyleft is necessary, and also why large companies have spread a lot of anti-GPL propaganda. In a larger sense, we desperately need a societal shi

This is why copyleft is necessary, and also why large companies have spread a lot of anti-GPL propaganda. In a larger sense, we desperately need a societal shift in perspective from naively viewing companies as benevolent by default, to viewing companies as they actually are by default: they'll literally kill people if it's profitable.

eleumik 3y ago
This they told me at first lesson of economics at university, 1989
pydry 3y ago
Not just anti GPL but anti BSL/Elastic license too.
immibis 3y ago
AGPL/proprietary dual licensed is a solution to this. Clients get two choices: give back as much as they take, or fuck you pay me. The former makes everyone happy, and the latter stops the developer making themselves homeless.
- rmbyrro 3y ago
  Author tried it and didn't work. He presumes small businesses don't care about the potential risks associated with LGPL, and those were the majority of his most promising market.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    The risk profile to a SaaS company from LGPL and AGPL licensed code are night and day. Even GPL is pretty low risk for a hosting company, but LGPL's risk is strictly lower.
  - tormeh 3y ago
    And those small businesses were right. All the Apache/MIT-licensed software baffles me when LGPL for libraries and AGPL for applications seem clearly superior for promoting collaboration.
    - immibis 3y ago
      Big businesses convinced software developers they have the world's best intentions at heart, or at least, they are harmless and never need to be opposed.
  - KingMob 3y ago
    The LGPL, which the author tried, is not the AGPL, which might have been a larger roadblock to the freeriding unicorn.
    - jonhohle 3y ago
      Any company big enough to have a legal department will tell their devs to say away from LGPL, GPLv3, etc. If a dev is using that as promo for their commercial offering, it will probably just be ignored.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        My company is big enough to have a legal department. (I'm the tech counterpart/coordinator with legal for open-source topics, whether its us open-sourcing code we work on, contributing to existing open-source, or consuming open-source.) We license under Apachev2, and we readily use LGPL & GPL v2/v3 with a quick review, and have very specific and much more thorough review processes for AGPL. I'm quite sure that I don't work for the only such company.
  - jokethrowaway 3y ago
    It's definitely a matter of target market. He made a small business and he's targeting small companies who are probably still running a cracked version of photoshop CS6. Big companies have rules about which OSS licences they can use and enforce them on their developers. Developers in general will just skip it and pick an alternative they can use without problems from legal and possibly without paying. So even with the license in place, I don't think it would ever magically attract big clients. I think the author needs something a bit more unique or way better sales to get larger businesses. They are all likely on Amazon SES or SendGrid.
sokoloff 3y ago
> This is why copyleft is necessary How would copyleft* have prevented this? AGPL might, but GPL (and therefore, copyleft) doesn't prevent the upthread outcome. * - GPL is the prototypical/original [as far as I know] widely-used example of a copyleft license and the startup using nodemailer could have done that just as well (and for free) if nodemailer was GPL-licensed.
rmbyrro 3y ago
That's the nature of some humans. A corporation is not required to kill for profit. Doctors would kill for profit. Politicians would. The same for engineers, cookers. Any profession, activity or line of business really. That's human nature. But not all humans. Not even majority, I'd say certainly. The problem is that this small minority gets 99% of the news. Very rarely one hears when a CEO avoids a decision that could endanger someone. Or when a Doctor is honest and preserves the patient's health above all. It doesn't mean these good things aren't happening all the time. Look at your life and remember: how many people could have done harm to you for a profit? How many do you remember actually doing it?
- komali2 3y ago
  > A corporation is not required to kill for profit. Perhaps no, but a corporation has no compunctions about killing for profit. Let's take the direct approach, and list some that will take money and a target list, and make those people dead for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_military_contractors#US_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_military_contr... Here's a list of companies in the USA who will sell you the tools you need to kill people at scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defense_contractors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defense_... But I think that's not exactly what we're talking about, we're talking more about how the corporate entity under this current system shields organizations of people from the deaths their decisions cause. GM knowingly let people die due to a defect in their vehicles that they were aware of: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-did-gm-take-so-long-to-respond-to-deadly-defect-corporate-culture-may-hold-answer/2014/03/30/5c366f6c-b691-11e3-b84e-897d3d12b816_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-did-gm-t... PG&E was found culpable for the pipeline rupture that killed 8 people and destroyed 38 homes in San Bruno in 2010, because they ignored inspection data. An article came out a few weeks ago about how immigrant child laborers are being killed in shocking volumes in American factories https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/12/immigrant-child-laborers-killed-factories-osha https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/12/i... Here's a fun that goes through a bit of the history of corporations killing people directly (murdering trade unionists) and indirectly (tobacco companies suppressing research). https://jacobin.com/2020/01/corporations-profit-values-murder-culture-boeing https://jacobin.com/2020/01/corporations-profit-values-murde... There's something uniquely devilish about the corporation in our current legal and economic system.
deleted 3y ago
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eleumik 3y ago

This they told me at first lesson of economics at university, 1989

pydry 3y ago

Not just anti GPL but anti BSL/Elastic license too.

immibis 3y ago

AGPL/proprietary dual licensed is a solution to this. Clients get two choices: give back as much as they take, or fuck you pay me. The former makes everyone happy, and the latter stops the developer making themselves homeless.

rmbyrro 3y ago
Author tried it and didn't work. He presumes small businesses don't care about the potential risks associated with LGPL, and those were the majority of his most promising market.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  The risk profile to a SaaS company from LGPL and AGPL licensed code are night and day. Even GPL is pretty low risk for a hosting company, but LGPL's risk is strictly lower.
- tormeh 3y ago
  And those small businesses were right. All the Apache/MIT-licensed software baffles me when LGPL for libraries and AGPL for applications seem clearly superior for promoting collaboration.
  - immibis 3y ago
    Big businesses convinced software developers they have the world's best intentions at heart, or at least, they are harmless and never need to be opposed.
- KingMob 3y ago
  The LGPL, which the author tried, is not the AGPL, which might have been a larger roadblock to the freeriding unicorn.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    Any company big enough to have a legal department will tell their devs to say away from LGPL, GPLv3, etc. If a dev is using that as promo for their commercial offering, it will probably just be ignored.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      My company is big enough to have a legal department. (I'm the tech counterpart/coordinator with legal for open-source topics, whether its us open-sourcing code we work on, contributing to existing open-source, or consuming open-source.) We license under Apachev2, and we readily use LGPL & GPL v2/v3 with a quick review, and have very specific and much more thorough review processes for AGPL. I'm quite sure that I don't work for the only such company.
- jokethrowaway 3y ago
  It's definitely a matter of target market. He made a small business and he's targeting small companies who are probably still running a cracked version of photoshop CS6. Big companies have rules about which OSS licences they can use and enforce them on their developers. Developers in general will just skip it and pick an alternative they can use without problems from legal and possibly without paying. So even with the license in place, I don't think it would ever magically attract big clients. I think the author needs something a bit more unique or way better sales to get larger businesses. They are all likely on Amazon SES or SendGrid.

sokoloff 3y ago

> This is why copyleft is necessary How would copyleft* have prevented this? AGPL might, but GPL (and therefore, copyleft) doesn't prevent the upthread outcome. * - GPL is the prototypical/original [as far as I know] widely-used example of a copyleft license and the startup using nodemailer could have done that just as well (and for free) if nodemailer was GPL-licensed.

rmbyrro 3y ago

That's the nature of some humans. A corporation is not required to kill for profit. Doctors would kill for profit. Politicians would. The same for engineers, cookers. Any profession, activity or line of business really. That's human nature. But not all humans. Not even majority, I'd say certainly. The problem is that this small minority gets 99% of the news. Very rarely one hears when a CEO avoids a decision that could endanger someone. Or when a Doctor is honest and preserves the patient's health above all. It doesn't mean these good things aren't happening all the time. Look at your life and remember: how many people could have done harm to you for a profit? How many do you remember actually doing it?

komali2 3y ago
> A corporation is not required to kill for profit. Perhaps no, but a corporation has no compunctions about killing for profit. Let's take the direct approach, and list some that will take money and a target list, and make those people dead for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_military_contractors#US_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_military_contr... Here's a list of companies in the USA who will sell you the tools you need to kill people at scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defense_contractors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defense_... But I think that's not exactly what we're talking about, we're talking more about how the corporate entity under this current system shields organizations of people from the deaths their decisions cause. GM knowingly let people die due to a defect in their vehicles that they were aware of: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-did-gm-take-so-long-to-respond-to-deadly-defect-corporate-culture-may-hold-answer/2014/03/30/5c366f6c-b691-11e3-b84e-897d3d12b816_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-did-gm-t... PG&E was found culpable for the pipeline rupture that killed 8 people and destroyed 38 homes in San Bruno in 2010, because they ignored inspection data. An article came out a few weeks ago about how immigrant child laborers are being killed in shocking volumes in American factories https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/12/immigrant-child-laborers-killed-factories-osha https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/12/i... Here's a fun that goes through a bit of the history of corporations killing people directly (murdering trade unionists) and indirectly (tobacco companies suppressing research). https://jacobin.com/2020/01/corporations-profit-values-murder-culture-boeing https://jacobin.com/2020/01/corporations-profit-values-murde... There's something uniquely devilish about the corporation in our current legal and economic system.

deleted 3y ago

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