3 ms·

Maybe don't use an open-source licence if you don't want people to freely use your project's source code?? Especially a permissive one that doesn't require copy

by jjmarr 2y ago

Maybe don't use an open-source licence if you don't want people to freely use your project's source code?? Especially a permissive one that doesn't require copyleft.

g_delgado14 2y ago
The same could be said of corporations who aren’t required to report pollution and thus exploit because it’s legal. Morality isn’t encoded in most agreements.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  AGPL encodes quite a bit of morality, and suddenly when expectations are written in clear language people stop liking it
- jchw 2y ago
  The entire premise of copyleft is taking advantage of copyright law to be able to represent moral expectations in the copyright license. Within the limits of copyright law is plenty of room to choose something restrictive enough to fit with whatever you want. If you pick a permissive license and people use your software in accordance with that license, complaining just doesn't make sense. The license you have them explicitly allows this. It's not a loophole, it's not a mistake in the license, it's not something that the license authors didn't foresee, it is a feature. It is unfortunate when people make decisions that have legal ramifications they do not understand, but there's gotta be at least a little personal responsibility here. It's no different for code than anything else. There was a case not long ago where someone who made royalty free music changed their mind and tried to make copyright claims against people who had used their music in their YouTube videos. But can we be fair here? If you released this thing with an explicit royalty free license like that, can you really get mad because you can't get royalties that you clearly didn't expect in the first place? If you're worried that you may regret releasing your own works under open source licenses, permissive or copyleft, then simply don't do it. The downside is that you can't be a direct part of the open source ecosystem, either by using existing (non-permissive) libraries or by being adopted by other open source software, but the thing is the vast majority of developers are aware of what they're signing up for. If someone makes a million dollars off of your open source software, you can have an expected paycheck of $0.00, and that even goes if it's copyleft. The plus side of this trade-off is that it enables anyone to take advantage of your software, even if they wouldn't normally have the means of licensing a product for their use case, with very low friction, providing the maximum benefit. Copyright law, though, certainly does let you encode the expectation that "if you want to make money using this you must pay me", so if that's your expectation, don't use licenses that contradict it, especially not just because it is trendy.
  - jjmarr 2y ago
    CC-BY-NC-SA allows you to ban commercial use as well, if you really don't want downstream people using your stuff commercially.
- theamk 2y ago
  but it is. What do you think the difference between MIT, GPL, AGPL and BSL is? It's explicitly what you call "morality". It is super easy to release things under AGPL today. If people don't, it is an explicit decision.
behnamoh 2y ago
this kind of mindset prevents many people from open sourcing their projects. "why give it away for free when you can monetize the closed source version?" I personally have donated to several open source projects but I know it's nothing compared to the price I've had to pay for closed source ones.
- kgwgk 2y ago
  "Why give it away for free when I don't want to give it away for free" seems a pretty good mindset to prevent someone who doesn't want to give things away for free from doing so by mistake and regretting it later.
benwilber0 2y ago
Yeah. RooCode intentionally uses one of the most permissive licenses in existence and even formally declares in the README of the project that they are not responsible for the usage or output of the software whatsoever. And yet people will still get upset when the software isn't used like the way they want it to be used...

by jjmarr 2y ago

Maybe don't use an open-source licence if you don't want people to freely use your project's source code?? Especially a permissive one that doesn't require copyleft.

g_delgado14 2y ago

The same could be said of corporations who aren’t required to report pollution and thus exploit because it’s legal. Morality isn’t encoded in most agreements.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
AGPL encodes quite a bit of morality, and suddenly when expectations are written in clear language people stop liking it
jchw 2y ago
The entire premise of copyleft is taking advantage of copyright law to be able to represent moral expectations in the copyright license. Within the limits of copyright law is plenty of room to choose something restrictive enough to fit with whatever you want. If you pick a permissive license and people use your software in accordance with that license, complaining just doesn't make sense. The license you have them explicitly allows this. It's not a loophole, it's not a mistake in the license, it's not something that the license authors didn't foresee, it is a feature. It is unfortunate when people make decisions that have legal ramifications they do not understand, but there's gotta be at least a little personal responsibility here. It's no different for code than anything else. There was a case not long ago where someone who made royalty free music changed their mind and tried to make copyright claims against people who had used their music in their YouTube videos. But can we be fair here? If you released this thing with an explicit royalty free license like that, can you really get mad because you can't get royalties that you clearly didn't expect in the first place? If you're worried that you may regret releasing your own works under open source licenses, permissive or copyleft, then simply don't do it. The downside is that you can't be a direct part of the open source ecosystem, either by using existing (non-permissive) libraries or by being adopted by other open source software, but the thing is the vast majority of developers are aware of what they're signing up for. If someone makes a million dollars off of your open source software, you can have an expected paycheck of $0.00, and that even goes if it's copyleft. The plus side of this trade-off is that it enables anyone to take advantage of your software, even if they wouldn't normally have the means of licensing a product for their use case, with very low friction, providing the maximum benefit. Copyright law, though, certainly does let you encode the expectation that "if you want to make money using this you must pay me", so if that's your expectation, don't use licenses that contradict it, especially not just because it is trendy.
- jjmarr 2y ago
  CC-BY-NC-SA allows you to ban commercial use as well, if you really don't want downstream people using your stuff commercially.
theamk 2y ago
but it is. What do you think the difference between MIT, GPL, AGPL and BSL is? It's explicitly what you call "morality". It is super easy to release things under AGPL today. If people don't, it is an explicit decision.

behnamoh 2y ago

this kind of mindset prevents many people from open sourcing their projects. "why give it away for free when you can monetize the closed source version?" I personally have donated to several open source projects but I know it's nothing compared to the price I've had to pay for closed source ones.

kgwgk 2y ago
"Why give it away for free when I don't want to give it away for free" seems a pretty good mindset to prevent someone who doesn't want to give things away for free from doing so by mistake and regretting it later.

benwilber0 2y ago

Yeah. RooCode intentionally uses one of the most permissive licenses in existence and even formally declares in the README of the project that they are not responsible for the usage or output of the software whatsoever. And yet people will still get upset when the software isn't used like the way they want it to be used...