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> (...) switch to a less permissive license. License "permissiveness" is a relative concept. From the point of view of the users of your software, the GPL is

> (...) switch to a less permissive license. License "permissiveness" is a relative concept. From the point of view of the users of your software, the GPL is more permissive than MIT, since they have permission to see the source code. If you release software under MIT or BSD licenses, you allow middlemen to strip this right to users of your software.

skrebbel 2y ago
Don’t spread FUD please. Middlemen can’t change Ladybird’s license or prevent anyone from seeing its source code. I know that’s not what you meant, but it is what you said.
- freedomben 2y ago
  If you look at the parent comment directly above in the hierarchy, it is pretty clear that they are talking about a company coming in and taking it, adding stuff to it, and calling it their own browser. I think you have to try pretty hard to read in that GP is saying that the original source code license would be changed.
flykespice 2y ago
That is a complete nonsensical claim & willful attempt at spreading misinformation: Permissive licenses doesn't grants you less freedom than GPL, infact it grants you more because the user also has the freedom to modify source code without being enforced to make it public. Companies copying the codebase to their propietary ones won't automatically strip right of users, licenses don't work like that, the original codebase will still be fine. Whether said companies will contribute back is irrelevant.
- guappa 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - freedomben 2y ago
    I'm guessing you're being downvoted for comparing software to slavery. Generally speaking, the modern society seems to have forgotten that the world isn't binary - you can make comparisons and have similarities that are far apart on the spectrum so aren't equalities, but can still find informative meaning. But to your point, this exact argument was used by top southern politicians to justify slavery! It was the freedom of the slave owner, their right to own property, that justified slavery. James Hammond famously made this argument to congress shortly before the Civil War broke out. If this is interesting to you, Eric Larson just released a great book called "The Demon of Unrest" that covers this.
    - zzo38computer 2y ago
      The point is understood, but it is a problem with copyright laws, and not only with the license. This is why I had suggested before, that if you cannot just abolish copyright laws, then to make the license which will allow freedom except that it cannot further restrict anyone by further copyright. No attribution is required, no notices of changes are required, etc; the only requirement is that any further restrictions you claim on your version will be invalid. This is therefore effectively similar than as though you did abolish copyright laws, but only this program. (However, for practical purposes, I had allowed to (optionally) relicense by GNU GPL3 and GNU AGPL3, although only if you are able to follow the terms of those licenses (e.g. having the source codes available, knowing who wrote the original code, etc).)
  - unclenoriega 2y ago
    Who are the slaves in this analogy?
    - tristan957 2y ago
      I would say that the users are the slaves. Without GPL software, we could end up in situations where hardware vendors stop shipping software updates, so we are slaves to capitalism by having to buy things we shouldn't need to buy. This goes hand in hand with right to repair in my opinion.
- hfgjbcgjbvg 2y ago
  You can copy GPL code, modify it and use it personally and nobody is going to care unless you’re making tons of money. The entities pushing for MIT style licensing are massive and for profit.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    > The entities pushing for MIT style licensing are massive and for profit. I license all my stuff with permissive licenses because (in my opinion) they are more free than the GPL and such licenses. I don't have any massive for-profit company pushing me to do so. Mr. Kling is also not a massive for-profit company, he's just a guy making the software he wants to make. Your argument is in very bad faith.
    - binary132 2y ago
      “Open source” was literally conceived and organized in its inception as a corporate-sponsored competitor to the threat of Free Software.
mrighele 2y ago
> you allow middlemen to strip this right to users of your software. That's not true. Somebody can take the source code and build something closed on top of it, but the original code will be already free, and you will always have the right to see it. For example, PlayStation OS is based on FreeBSD (AFAIK). They took it, adapted it and added a lot of stuff. Did you lose the right to see the source code of FreeBSD ? No. Can you see the source code of PlayStation OS ? No, but you never had that right, so you have not been stripped of anything.
- freedomben 2y ago
  GP is clearly talking about this is the same context that the GPL does. This is a decades-long running debate and it isn't as simple as you and the sibling commenters are trying to make it. Of course it doesn't change the original project. But when people take the codebase and build a new product on it, what GP says is absolutely the case. The devs can withhold all code and rights to it from the next user. This is most commonly an issue when it comes to libraries rather than end products, but not always. It doesn't also have to mean that the original project dies or disappears, it can just rob from their growth potential. Examples are quite easy to find. There's been a big hullaballoo over cloud providers taking open source projects and competing with them by offering managed versions of the service that are well-integrated into their ecosystems. Economically this is also a problem because the cloud provider can then undercut the price of the managed service compared to the official one since they aren't bearing the burden of building/maintaining the codebase. I'm by no means against "permissive" licensing (MIT, etc), I think they have their time and place just like GPL, etc, but I am against dismissing valid concerns with shallow replies.
  - karmajunkie 2y ago
    as you said, this is a decades-long running debate, and pretty much every argument has been heard, ad nauseum. That makes this "valid concern" a pretty low-quality reply. The first freedom that GPL-lovers have is whether or not to use the project.
  - tracker1 2y ago
bigstrat2003 2y ago
> If you release software under MIT or BSD licenses, you allow middlemen to strip this right to users of your software. No you don't. You're being extremely disingenuous with this phrasing. No matter how many other parties take the source code and make a closed source product out of it, the users of your software will always have the same rights you granted them to begin with. No freedom has been lost. And before you say "but your users won't have the same rights to the derivative works", that isn't a loss of freedom. They never had those rights to begin with, therefore they cannot lose them. Not gaining something is not the same as losing it.
tracker1 2y ago
Well, with MIT, you can make your own (A)GPL fork of you like and carry on. Best of luck.
MobiusHorizons 2y ago
I think permissive here is a technical term, and is being used correctly from a legal perspective as far as I understand although I am not a lawyer. The GPL is less permissive than a BSD or MIT license because it places more restrictions on the licensee. This is a legal fact and not a matter of spin.

skrebbel 2y ago

Don’t spread FUD please. Middlemen can’t change Ladybird’s license or prevent anyone from seeing its source code. I know that’s not what you meant, but it is what you said.

freedomben 2y ago
If you look at the parent comment directly above in the hierarchy, it is pretty clear that they are talking about a company coming in and taking it, adding stuff to it, and calling it their own browser. I think you have to try pretty hard to read in that GP is saying that the original source code license would be changed.

flykespice 2y ago

That is a complete nonsensical claim & willful attempt at spreading misinformation: Permissive licenses doesn't grants you less freedom than GPL, infact it grants you more because the user also has the freedom to modify source code without being enforced to make it public. Companies copying the codebase to their propietary ones won't automatically strip right of users, licenses don't work like that, the original codebase will still be fine. Whether said companies will contribute back is irrelevant.

guappa 2y ago
[flagged]
- freedomben 2y ago
  I'm guessing you're being downvoted for comparing software to slavery. Generally speaking, the modern society seems to have forgotten that the world isn't binary - you can make comparisons and have similarities that are far apart on the spectrum so aren't equalities, but can still find informative meaning. But to your point, this exact argument was used by top southern politicians to justify slavery! It was the freedom of the slave owner, their right to own property, that justified slavery. James Hammond famously made this argument to congress shortly before the Civil War broke out. If this is interesting to you, Eric Larson just released a great book called "The Demon of Unrest" that covers this.
  - zzo38computer 2y ago
    The point is understood, but it is a problem with copyright laws, and not only with the license. This is why I had suggested before, that if you cannot just abolish copyright laws, then to make the license which will allow freedom except that it cannot further restrict anyone by further copyright. No attribution is required, no notices of changes are required, etc; the only requirement is that any further restrictions you claim on your version will be invalid. This is therefore effectively similar than as though you did abolish copyright laws, but only this program. (However, for practical purposes, I had allowed to (optionally) relicense by GNU GPL3 and GNU AGPL3, although only if you are able to follow the terms of those licenses (e.g. having the source codes available, knowing who wrote the original code, etc).)
- unclenoriega 2y ago
  Who are the slaves in this analogy?
  - tristan957 2y ago
    I would say that the users are the slaves. Without GPL software, we could end up in situations where hardware vendors stop shipping software updates, so we are slaves to capitalism by having to buy things we shouldn't need to buy. This goes hand in hand with right to repair in my opinion.
hfgjbcgjbvg 2y ago
You can copy GPL code, modify it and use it personally and nobody is going to care unless you’re making tons of money. The entities pushing for MIT style licensing are massive and for profit.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  > The entities pushing for MIT style licensing are massive and for profit. I license all my stuff with permissive licenses because (in my opinion) they are more free than the GPL and such licenses. I don't have any massive for-profit company pushing me to do so. Mr. Kling is also not a massive for-profit company, he's just a guy making the software he wants to make. Your argument is in very bad faith.
  - binary132 2y ago
    “Open source” was literally conceived and organized in its inception as a corporate-sponsored competitor to the threat of Free Software.

mrighele 2y ago

> you allow middlemen to strip this right to users of your software. That's not true. Somebody can take the source code and build something closed on top of it, but the original code will be already free, and you will always have the right to see it. For example, PlayStation OS is based on FreeBSD (AFAIK). They took it, adapted it and added a lot of stuff. Did you lose the right to see the source code of FreeBSD ? No. Can you see the source code of PlayStation OS ? No, but you never had that right, so you have not been stripped of anything.

freedomben 2y ago
GP is clearly talking about this is the same context that the GPL does. This is a decades-long running debate and it isn't as simple as you and the sibling commenters are trying to make it. Of course it doesn't change the original project. But when people take the codebase and build a new product on it, what GP says is absolutely the case. The devs can withhold all code and rights to it from the next user. This is most commonly an issue when it comes to libraries rather than end products, but not always. It doesn't also have to mean that the original project dies or disappears, it can just rob from their growth potential. Examples are quite easy to find. There's been a big hullaballoo over cloud providers taking open source projects and competing with them by offering managed versions of the service that are well-integrated into their ecosystems. Economically this is also a problem because the cloud provider can then undercut the price of the managed service compared to the official one since they aren't bearing the burden of building/maintaining the codebase. I'm by no means against "permissive" licensing (MIT, etc), I think they have their time and place just like GPL, etc, but I am against dismissing valid concerns with shallow replies.
- karmajunkie 2y ago
  as you said, this is a decades-long running debate, and pretty much every argument has been heard, ad nauseum. That makes this "valid concern" a pretty low-quality reply. The first freedom that GPL-lovers have is whether or not to use the project.
- tracker1 2y ago

bigstrat2003 2y ago

> If you release software under MIT or BSD licenses, you allow middlemen to strip this right to users of your software. No you don't. You're being extremely disingenuous with this phrasing. No matter how many other parties take the source code and make a closed source product out of it, the users of your software will always have the same rights you granted them to begin with. No freedom has been lost. And before you say "but your users won't have the same rights to the derivative works", that isn't a loss of freedom. They never had those rights to begin with, therefore they cannot lose them. Not gaining something is not the same as losing it.

tracker1 2y ago

Well, with MIT, you can make your own (A)GPL fork of you like and carry on. Best of luck.

MobiusHorizons 2y ago

I think permissive here is a technical term, and is being used correctly from a legal perspective as far as I understand although I am not a lawyer. The GPL is less permissive than a BSD or MIT license because it places more restrictions on the licensee. This is a legal fact and not a matter of spin.