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The GPL ensures the software will always be free. "Permissive" licences don't. Permissive licences permit anyone to create a derivative version that isn't free.

The GPL ensures the software will always be free. "Permissive" licences don't. Permissive licences permit anyone to create a derivative version that isn't free. No source code, and it will be under copyright. If there's one thing people need to understand it's that corporations will always strive to take as much as they can and give back as little as they can. It's incredibly naive to think they won't do it again after that's exactly what every corporation has done for the past several centuries. Give an inch and they'll take a mile. You can't seriously think companies like Microsoft and Oracle aren't already salivating at the thought of the community rewriting GNU/Linux in a permissive licence? It's not that this particular case is "freedoms being attacked". It's that freedoms are constantly and relentlessly under attack and we can't let our guard down for one moment. GPL is our protection and voluntarily stepping out of it would be suicide.

viraptor 2y ago
You mean the Microsoft which not that long ago releases the proprietary .Net code under mit? It's not all going one way, even in large corps. Windows also ships with wsl now - what would they even gain now from non-gnu Linux?
- WD-42 2y ago
  They did both those things because it’s the only way they can compete. You really think they would open source any of that stuff if developers weren’t leaving their platform in droves? WSL is them just exploiting foss to make up for their own shortcomings.
- neonsunset 2y ago
  .NET case was mostly a rewrite, many components were rewritten from scratch (sooner or later). Roslyn was a compiler-rewrite to make C# self-hosted with, what I understand, intention to make it OSS from the beginning. .NET (then Core) started with RyuJIT. AFAIK RyuJIT also mainly exists for .NET only, where-as .NET Framework uses older, different compiler codebase. But yes, there were additional licensing assurances provided so as to not create problems for Novell/Mono - it was always treated positively.

viraptor 2y ago

You mean the Microsoft which not that long ago releases the proprietary .Net code under mit? It's not all going one way, even in large corps. Windows also ships with wsl now - what would they even gain now from non-gnu Linux?

WD-42 2y ago
They did both those things because it’s the only way they can compete. You really think they would open source any of that stuff if developers weren’t leaving their platform in droves? WSL is them just exploiting foss to make up for their own shortcomings.
neonsunset 2y ago
.NET case was mostly a rewrite, many components were rewritten from scratch (sooner or later). Roslyn was a compiler-rewrite to make C# self-hosted with, what I understand, intention to make it OSS from the beginning. .NET (then Core) started with RyuJIT. AFAIK RyuJIT also mainly exists for .NET only, where-as .NET Framework uses older, different compiler codebase. But yes, there were additional licensing assurances provided so as to not create problems for Novell/Mono - it was always treated positively.