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The problem with your argument is that the GPL has not only provided the corporate world with free labor, but with a licensing model that big corporations now l

The problem with your argument is that the GPL has not only provided the corporate world with free labor, but with a licensing model that big corporations now like for their own stuff, because it lets them license the code to other parties while retaining important advantages over those parties. GNU and Linux are the engine that powers practically every form of online harm. The best licenses are BSD and MIT and others of that sort; they have no naive pretense of not helping corporations: everyone can do almost whatever they want, be they a large business or an individual. These licenses also don't encourage unlevel playing fields where the copyright proprietor enjoys dominance in the ecosystem. For instance, if you are licensee under the BSD2, the only thing you cannot do, in comparison with the copyright holder, is remove copyright notices from the documentation or other materials accompanying the compiled code. This is really a minor thing which only stands in the way of those who want to be outright plagiarists. With the GPL, it's extremely important to be the copyright holder, so that you can litigate. That's why the Free Software Foundation and GNU Project require copyright assignment for all non-trivial contributions to every project. If your program is a patchwork of files, each copyright someone else, you can't litigate infringement cases easily.

wakawaka28 2y ago
>The best licenses are BSD and MIT and others of that sort; they have no naive pretense of not helping corporations: everyone can do almost whatever they want, be they a large business or an individual. These licenses also don't encourage unlevel playing fields where the copyright proprietor enjoys dominance in the ecosystem. The project owner ALWAYS has dominance in the ecosystem. At least with GPL the owner is protected from someone else scooping up the project to make a closed version. How would you feel if you made an awesome open project only for someone to copy it and close the source, make minor changes, and sell it without even giving you the changes? That crap is not possible with GPL.
- kazinator 2y ago
  The GPL does not prevent closed versions because of Tivoization, and SaaS. For instance, Facebook is closed, in spite of running on a mountain of GPLed stuff. A locked device may prevent the user from running a kernel image that is not signed with a certain private key, even though the vendor of the device complies with the GPL and provides the matching kernel sources and the correct toolchain to reproduce the build without a signature. I would almost go as far as to say that, in this day and age, someone ripping off free source code in order to create a nice, local-only application, is practically a hero. :)
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    This is why we have AGPL and GPLv3. You can TiVoize the kernel, but you have to provide the user land, at minimum. In a MIT only world, you would have no source of anything. So not only you can’t build a signature-free version of the kernel for educational purposes, you can’t even have it. This is a corporation paradise.
    - kazinator 2y ago
      Unfortunately, AGPL is a non-free license, which dictates how one may run the program when not redistributing any of its code. It's a clumsy attempt to attack a certain problem in the social computing sphere using software licensing. (You know the adage about every problem looking like a nail when the only tool you have is a hammer.) Open source licenses are characterized by the fact that you don't have to read them, let alone agree with them, merely in order to obtain the software and use it. These licenses "kick in" when you redistribute. The AGPL can only be litigated as a closed license; i.e. the argument being that if the defendant does not use the program in accordance with the license, their copy is infringing, the same like a cracked version of Photoshop. Whether you are allowed to have a copy or not depends on how you are using it. A successful AGPL litigation would mainly succeed in proving to the world that the license is nonfree, which would be evident from the arguments that would necessarily have to be used, and the reasoning necessarily expressed in the verdict.
      - bayindirh 2y ago
        Like it or not, AGPL is a free software license. It only says that even if you provide the service as a SaaS, you share the code if you change it. You may dislike that particular family of licenses, but it doesn’t allow you to give false information about it. Maybe it’s not intentional, so you need to refresh your understanding. We’re humans, and our brains are not tapes. Knowledge distorts. I experience the same. GPL says something simple: “Modified the code? Share it. Oh, BTW, you can’t change the license.” The rest is legalese.
        2y ago
pabs3 2y ago
Under the GPL, users can litigate too. There is a test case for this running now: https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

wakawaka28 2y ago

>The best licenses are BSD and MIT and others of that sort; they have no naive pretense of not helping corporations: everyone can do almost whatever they want, be they a large business or an individual. These licenses also don't encourage unlevel playing fields where the copyright proprietor enjoys dominance in the ecosystem. The project owner ALWAYS has dominance in the ecosystem. At least with GPL the owner is protected from someone else scooping up the project to make a closed version. How would you feel if you made an awesome open project only for someone to copy it and close the source, make minor changes, and sell it without even giving you the changes? That crap is not possible with GPL.

kazinator 2y ago
The GPL does not prevent closed versions because of Tivoization, and SaaS. For instance, Facebook is closed, in spite of running on a mountain of GPLed stuff. A locked device may prevent the user from running a kernel image that is not signed with a certain private key, even though the vendor of the device complies with the GPL and provides the matching kernel sources and the correct toolchain to reproduce the build without a signature. I would almost go as far as to say that, in this day and age, someone ripping off free source code in order to create a nice, local-only application, is practically a hero. :)
- bayindirh 2y ago
  This is why we have AGPL and GPLv3. You can TiVoize the kernel, but you have to provide the user land, at minimum. In a MIT only world, you would have no source of anything. So not only you can’t build a signature-free version of the kernel for educational purposes, you can’t even have it. This is a corporation paradise.
  - kazinator 2y ago
    Unfortunately, AGPL is a non-free license, which dictates how one may run the program when not redistributing any of its code. It's a clumsy attempt to attack a certain problem in the social computing sphere using software licensing. (You know the adage about every problem looking like a nail when the only tool you have is a hammer.) Open source licenses are characterized by the fact that you don't have to read them, let alone agree with them, merely in order to obtain the software and use it. These licenses "kick in" when you redistribute. The AGPL can only be litigated as a closed license; i.e. the argument being that if the defendant does not use the program in accordance with the license, their copy is infringing, the same like a cracked version of Photoshop. Whether you are allowed to have a copy or not depends on how you are using it. A successful AGPL litigation would mainly succeed in proving to the world that the license is nonfree, which would be evident from the arguments that would necessarily have to be used, and the reasoning necessarily expressed in the verdict.
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      Like it or not, AGPL is a free software license. It only says that even if you provide the service as a SaaS, you share the code if you change it. You may dislike that particular family of licenses, but it doesn’t allow you to give false information about it. Maybe it’s not intentional, so you need to refresh your understanding. We’re humans, and our brains are not tapes. Knowledge distorts. I experience the same. GPL says something simple: “Modified the code? Share it. Oh, BTW, you can’t change the license.” The rest is legalese.
      - 2y ago

pabs3 2y ago

Under the GPL, users can litigate too. There is a test case for this running now: https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html