4 ms·

Of course, GPL and copyleft is a kind of trick which serves the interests of the one who owns the exclusive copyrights. GPL was a real gold mine in the early da

Of course, GPL and copyleft is a kind of trick which serves the interests of the one who owns the exclusive copyrights. GPL was a real gold mine in the early days because companies didn't bother to distinguish between copyleft and permissive MIT-style licenses when using open source. It became a kind of trap to allow open source devs to monetize their copyrights by selling licenses to allow companies to keep their derived work private.

matheusmoreira 2y ago
That's such an extreme position that even Stallman rejects it. Think it over. Even Stallman, the guy who fetches web pages by mail so as to avoid running non-free JavaScript, promotes the business model of selling permission to violate the GPL to corporations. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html It's okay to do it. This preserves freedom for everyone and gives you the leverage needed to negotiate a contract with a corporation. Everyone can enjoy hacking on an AGPLv3 project. The companies that can't will pay you for the privilege. They might pay you enough that you can work full time on it, maybe even hire more contributors, maybe just enjoy life. If you're against this, then logically you are also against permissive licenses which allow all this and more. Even Stallman, the most extreme free software proponent alive today, found this to be too extreme. He didn't consider permissive licenses to be immoral, therefore he isn't against this. I even emailed him to confirm. AGPLv3 is better because only the copyright owner gets to do it, nobody else. Permissive licenses allow everybody else to do it, no questions asked. They just give away all the leverage, completely free. One of the biggest wealth transfer in history, from well meaning developers and straight into the pockets of corporations.
- jongjong 2y ago
  As an open source dev, I like GPL for that reason. It was a kind of trick which kept some monetization paths open for the dev. It no longer works though because now most companies refuse to incorporate GPL libraries into their products. They have tools to check for dependencies automatically. Now open source is almost impossible to monetize.

matheusmoreira 2y ago

That's such an extreme position that even Stallman rejects it. Think it over. Even Stallman, the guy who fetches web pages by mail so as to avoid running non-free JavaScript, promotes the business model of selling permission to violate the GPL to corporations. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html It's okay to do it. This preserves freedom for everyone and gives you the leverage needed to negotiate a contract with a corporation. Everyone can enjoy hacking on an AGPLv3 project. The companies that can't will pay you for the privilege. They might pay you enough that you can work full time on it, maybe even hire more contributors, maybe just enjoy life. If you're against this, then logically you are also against permissive licenses which allow all this and more. Even Stallman, the most extreme free software proponent alive today, found this to be too extreme. He didn't consider permissive licenses to be immoral, therefore he isn't against this. I even emailed him to confirm. AGPLv3 is better because only the copyright owner gets to do it, nobody else. Permissive licenses allow everybody else to do it, no questions asked. They just give away all the leverage, completely free. One of the biggest wealth transfer in history, from well meaning developers and straight into the pockets of corporations.

jongjong 2y ago
As an open source dev, I like GPL for that reason. It was a kind of trick which kept some monetization paths open for the dev. It no longer works though because now most companies refuse to incorporate GPL libraries into their products. They have tools to check for dependencies automatically. Now open source is almost impossible to monetize.