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> there's undoubtedly some societal good from having GPL or LGPL licensed products encouraging organisations to release their code under a similar license. Und
by loeg 2y ago
> there's undoubtedly some societal good from having GPL or LGPL licensed products encouraging organisations to release their code under a similar license.
Undoubtedly is probably not the right words, since reasonable people disagree about this. Not everyone agrees with you that the GPL is an unalloyed good.
- Timon3 2y agoI honestly can't imagine any reasonable person arguing that GPL/LGPL have brought absolutely no societal good. Are you thinking of anybody in particular?
- airstrike 2y ago"no societal good" != "more societal good than alternatives"
- Timon3 2y agoThe opposite of "some societal good" isn't "less societal good than other alternatives", it's "no societal good". The original statement didn't contain any comparisons. Even the worst alternative can still have some societal good.
- loeg 2y agoThe original statement is comparing against non-copyleft licenses like MIT. It is clearly stating the author's preference for the GPL.
- Timon3 2y agoIt's not stating a preference - it's stating that, no matter what your preference is, there is some societal good from GPL/LGPL. Preferences don't change the existence of that good.
- airstrike 2y agoNot if you take "some societal good" to mean "some [marginal] societal good"
- Timon3 2y agoSure, if you add words, the meaning changes. So what?
- airstrike 2y agoIt's called nuance and context.
- Timon3 2y agoI honestly don't understand how you read this "nuance" into the original comment. They don't say that GPL/LGPL is absolutely better than MIT/BSD, and they speak positively about the project. There is no comparison here. The switch from GPL/LGPL to MIT/BSD loses a specific set of restrictions that are "encouraging organisations to release their code under a similar license". This is a specific societal good that is being lost. Even if you don't think that it's a big deal, I can't imagine anyone reasonable saying "literally everything would be better GPL/LGPL" - objectively, the public wouldn't be guaranteed to have open-source-free access to so many products. You can argue that there would be more products or whatever you want, but unless you're taking an absolutist stance, some societal good comes from these licenses. The only way to arrive at a comparison here would be to ignore the context and the chosen wording by the OP.
- airstrike 2y agoYou're only seeing the alleged benefits from GPL, without factoring in its costs. Everything is a tradeoff. Some companies don't touch GPL code, which means those projects receive less support than they would with a more permissive license such as MIT/BSD. You're claiming GPL "[encourages] organisations to release their code under a similar license". I'm saying it often discourages organisations from ever touching GPL code and picking other libraries instead. People have been writing about this in way more detail for a long time. If you're really trying to understand some position you can't possibly fathom and not just argue, then I'd point you to one post from 15 years ago: https://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-the-gpl-sucks/index.html https://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-the-gpl-sucks/index.htm...