8 ms·

> I default to using the MIT license as it is simple and permissive What's good about being "permissive"? I keep hearing this argument, but I still don't unde

• skywhopper 2y ago
  I don’t mind sharing my software with others, even folks who want to make a profit. Of course, that’s easy for me to say since I’ve only released a few small projects open source. But when I do, I make my projects fully public domain. I’m not interested in feeling any sense of obligation to those who try the software out, so I free them from any obligation to me as well. That said, I fully support larger projects being GPL, which I think is a more reasonable license for projects that involve dozens or hundreds of contributors and are depended on by millions around the world. But the role of the MIT and Apache style licenses has always felt a little more confusing.
  • sublimefire 2y ago
    This makes no sense, you want to make sure software gets updated in the future, however small. Permissive licensing allows companies to hide improvements and this in the long term erodes the original. Individuals on the other hand are not bound by legal teams and can work with GPL and similar.
    • LegionMammal978 2y ago
      The idea behind permissive licensing like this is that you don't particularly care about "eroding the original": you don't see its ineffable status in relation to others' work as something that must forever be maintained. I've also leaned toward CC0-style licensing for some of my smaller projects, that are shared for explanatory or artistic purposes. The reasoning is that GPL-style licenses give the code its own 'weight' as a unit, that keeps others from lifing good ideas from the code and incorporating them into their own projects as they wish, at any point in the next ~135 years. (The barriers aren't just the stereotypical "how dare they make me share my code!" but also the realities of license compatibility, having to make sure never to lose any version of the source, and so on.) I agree with GP that this isn't necessarily the best idea for large projects that exist for their own sake and that companies might find great profit in copying. But it's not like all projects fit that description.
  • pferde 2y ago
    But they wouldn't be under any obligation to you. They would be under obligation to whoever they distribute their modifications of your code. That's it.
• cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  I think attitudes on license reflects on the whole a generational attitudes towards corporate use because the younger generation of software nerds grew up in epoch-boom-times. During ZIRP-boom-times, having a successful popular open source project could be a ticket to kudos and a high paying job and a certain level of responsibility and satisfaction. BigCos spread the money around, and your job as a SWE ended up being gluing together a bunch of these open source pieces to solve corporate problems. And on the whole people felt like their corporate jobs were giving a fair deal, and a decent dividend for the open source work they were doing. In that context why would you pick a license that your generous employer couldn't use? The GPL and the free software movement is borne out of an earlier era, GenX and younger boomers who lived through seeing their hard work exploited and stolen from them. Or corporate entities that cut budgets, laid people off en masse, exploded in stock market crisis, etc and suddenly the good will was lost. I think we'll see a bit of a resurgence in the GPL, as some people try to protect the work they've done. (I do thnk the personality of Stallman himself has become a bit of a problem to be associated with)
  • koiueo 2y ago
    My conspiracy theory: Stallman's "rough edges" were deliberately highlighted and blown out of proportion to discredit GPL and his overall ideology. On one hand we have a guy, who just pointed out that the age of consent is a culture-dependent concept. On the other we have a guy who literally visited Epstein's island to fuck minors (as defined by his country of residence). One is now considered "a bit of a problem". The other is a beloved public figure.
  • mindcrime 2y ago
    > The GPL and the free software movement is borne out of an earlier era, GenX and younger boomers who lived through seeing their hard work exploited and stolen from them. There may be something to that, but speaking as a GenX'er myself, I release most of my OSS code using the Apache License. I really don't care if anybody - from a single student in a 3rd world country, to a Fortune 50 megacorp - uses the code, so long as they abide by the license. I'm not going to say there's NO circumstance where that might ever change. But to date, that's been my approach and I don't particularly see it ever changing.
• gwd 2y ago
  I initially had the same reaction to the MIT license; but it sort of looks like the GPL (or AGPL) wouldn't have really prevented this behavior. Microsoft (it sounds like) is making the code available; they've just extended and renamed the project. They could have done exactly the same thing (fork, rename, release under the same license), with the same effects he's complaining about (free-loading the consulting time, confusing the community) if he'd made it AGPL. I mean, consider an alternate timeline. It's clear MS had their own, strong vision for the project, that overlapped with but wasn't identical to his. Is it actually that much more considerate to show up with two dozen new developers suddenly flooding a single-maintainer project with pull requests, some of which completely restructure the code and re-orient it towards a new vision that the original maintainer might not want? Either the maintainer is now doing loads of unpaid labor for MS, and is the bottleneck; or he ends up having to step back and let the new MS developers bulldoze the project and take it over anyway. What would have been a better approach?
  • TheDong 2y ago
    I think the better approach would have been to give the author a choice of what happens. i.e. they could have emailed the author to ask: 1. "Would you rather us fork your project (new name), or would you rather donate your project to us under its original name, as well as give us the ability to rename it (which we will)" 2. "Would you like a $300 microsoft store gift card as thanks for writing some code we're planning to use?" 3. "Would you be open to providing a paid ($600 microsoft gift card) 1-hour consulting meeting to ramp our engineers up on your codebase? We won't actually listen since our engineers can in fact read, but we'll pay you" 4. "Also, just in case you don't know who microsoft is, we do have a careers page over here, and our team doesn't have headcount but other teams do <link>" It sounds like microsoft didn't do any of that, which as you say is well within their right, but emailing to ask is polite.
    • Y_Y 2y ago
      My god, a gift card? What am I going to do, buy FoxPro and a month of Xbox Live? Honestly I'd prefer to get no email at all than that miserable offer. If the project is only worth a couple of hundred dollars to them they're probably better off not bothering.
• kstrauser 2y ago
  I released a fun personal project under GPLv3 and the first filed issue was someone saying I should change the license to something friendlier to business interests. Hell no. If they want to profit off my work, pay me. This is something I'm doing for fun, on my own terms. It’s Free for anyone to use as they want, so long as they keep it Free, too.
  • pyfon 2y ago
    At this point I'd include some of the code as binary blobs and "pay me for the source!". In addition to GPL!
    • kstrauser 2y ago
      Temping, but we don't fight their crummy tactics by using the same ones.
      • pyfon 2y ago
        Why is it crummy? Open source benefits big tech now. Especially for cloud based stuff. Only open source it if it fucks big tech. E.g. bittorrent or an alternative browser. Or an app on your local machine as a SaaS alternative.
        • ryao 2y ago
          Blobs violate clause 2 of the Open Source Definition: https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd We are no longer talking about open source software if you distribute blobs in place of source code.
          • akdev1l 2y ago
            They could distribute source code under AGPLv3 while also offering paid/propietary pre-compiled binaries
            • 2y ago
• nicoburns 2y ago
  > what's the incentive for authors of one-man projects to choose anything "permissive". The incentive is generally that people enjoy having their projects used, be that by commercial companies or otherwise.
  • koiueo 2y ago
    (A)GPLv3 does not prevent their projects from being used. That's the point! GPL family of licenses would've made a difference in this aspect for libraries (because afair if you link to GPL code, you must be GPL). But for an app? You can use it, fork it, modify it... Just make sure you make your changes available under the same license. Seems very fair to me.
    • nicoburns 2y ago
      > (A)GPLv3 does not prevent their projects from being used. In practice, it does in many cases. Many companies have a blanket policy of avoiding these licences. But I agree that they make more sense for apps than libraries.
      • notpushkin 2y ago
        I’m wondering how’s it going with the whole dual-licensing schtik.
      • panzi 2y ago
        So they don't use Linux, bash, or GCC?
        • HideousKojima 2y ago
          Linux is GPLv2, not 3
        • KingLancelot 2y ago
          [dead]
        • 2y ago
• 0xTJ 2y ago
  I always choose permissive licenses for personal project, and I often avoid depending on other projects that aren't permissive. If I want to know that, if I need to, I can grab the code and change something. And I want others to be able to remix what I make as needed. The more limitations added on a license, the less open it is.
  • Panzer04 2y ago
    Only for the next developer. They can do whatever they want, but they aren't obligated to contribute anything back.
  • GrantMoyer 2y ago
    > And I want others to be able to remix what I make as needed. The more limitations added on a license, the less open it is. It's unintuitive, but permissive licenses are not the best way to acheive this. GPL's "limitations" are designed to maintain the right and abilty to remix code for the end user. So if say Microsoft forks your library and its fork becomes more popular, they can't make it proprietary after capturing the market and effectively stop people from remixing what you made.
    • bigstrat2003 2y ago
      > So if say Microsoft forks your library and its fork becomes more popular, they can't make it proprietary after capturing the market and effectively stop people from remixing what you made. Neither can they stop people from such remixing if the project used a permissive license. The GP's project will still be there, still freely available for anyone to use however they see fit. Nobody is stopped from using it in any way.
      • pabs3 2y ago
        The GPs project will become less relevant as the Microsoft fork becomes more popular, when it is fully irrelevant due to incompatible changes they can rugpull and everyone will have to pay them.
  • 2y ago
• wat10000 2y ago
  I’ve released some utility libraries under permissive libraries. I like it when they get used. Even when it’s part of a large company’s closed-source app. Many people don’t like that, and that’s perfectly fine, that’s why there are different choices available. What I’ll never understand is people who release their project with a permissive license and then get upset when a big company distributes their own version of the project in accordance with the license. If you don’t want that sort of appropriation then you need to pick a license that doesn’t allow it.
  • ghostly_s 2y ago
    Yeah, as far as I can gather the only thing MS did wrong here is not explicitly crediting the project they forked the code from, and I don't get the impression the author would find adding that one sentence to the docs to be adequate redress. I don't get why you would take personal offense at a big company forking your code so they can mold it to their purposes - the license allows that. Now whether that's the right way for a "friend of the OSS community" to behave is a different question entirely, but anyone who ever bought that horseshit from them has had their head in the sand.
    • jen20 2y ago
      Using code per the terms of the license is one thing. Stealing it it another, and that is what Microsoft appear to have done.
  • layer8 2y ago
    In the present case of Spegel, it wasn't in accordance with the license, because the fork removed the attribution.
    • wat10000 2y ago
      I get that, but it doesn’t really seem to be what the author is complaining about.
  • jenadine 2y ago
    Note that in this case Microsoft has not been following the license, as they removed the copyright notice Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors To replace it by their own. Despite the license says > The above copyright notice [...] shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
• rikroots 2y ago
  > I keep hearing this argument, but I still don't understand, what's the incentive for authors of one-man projects to choose anything "permissive". My JS canvas library is licensed using MIT. From my personal perspective, I wouldn't have any problem with some $MegaCorp coming along and forking it, and even claiming it as their own creation. But ... why? Because one of the main drivers for my development of the library over the past few years is to proof-of-concept the idea that 2D Canvas API based infographics and interactives can be made - with the help of a JS library - performant, responsive and (most importantly!) as accessible to every end user as reasonably possible. My ideal outcome would be to embarrass other JS canvas library maintainers into taking canvas responsiveness and accessibility seriously. If that needs a $MegaCorp to come along and fork the library to bring my dream closer to reality then I ain't gonna stand in their way! Of course I'd still continue to develop my version of the library - it's become my passion and obsession and there's always improvements to be made, new ideas to be explored.
  • koiueo 2y ago
    Remember EEE. Very likely, you'll end up with a $MegaCorp-backed competitor driven by goals very different from yours.
    • roguecoder 2y ago
      EEE assumes open source software is only going to be created if it is widely used. As soon as that isn't true, it is irrelevant. It was effective against companies that relied on interoperability and profited when people used their software projects. On the other hand, if someone wants to add features that my project can't support, it changes nothing about my life or work. When the goal is "make the best software possible", the $MegaCorp would only compete by making software that is better that what is available in the open source ecosystem. That doesn't take anything away from anyone else. It is a Pareto improvement: people can pay and have even better software, or not pay and use the still-good free option.
• paxys 2y ago
  Have to agree with this. There's an endless list of open source maintainers who publish an MIT-licensed project then are surprised when it is treated as an MIT-licensed project. If you want rights, assert them. No one else is looking out for you. Especially not Microsoft.
  • alganet 2y ago
    Maybe many MIT license users want a big company to take in their projects. Big companies have resources to mimic it anyway, right? If they really want some tech, they can reproduce it. Having a good idea flourish, whether it is in Microsoft's hands, manifested within Clojure, or in any other fruitful form, is good enough. There is no license for a raw idea anyway. For the essence of it. Seeing it used means success, it means "you were right". The secret counsel of idea honor keepers will eventually figure it out and make some kind of repairs.
  • pyrale 2y ago
    In this case, there's an open source maintainer who was fine with a MIT license, and even helping onboard people from a big tech firm, only to realize that even attribution was too much to ask. Since the terms of the license were violated, there's not much to learn about which license was chosen. The only lesson to learn is that big tech will steal everything that isn't nailed to the ground, and then some.
• cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  While working for companies, many devs have had the frustrating experience of finding a library that perfectly solves their problem, only to discover that it’s GPL3 or similar and thus strictly off limits due to company policy. Especially if repeated a few times that’s enough to inspire use of permissive licenses, to help avoid that frustration for their future selves (should they change employers) as well as other fellow corporate devs.
  • koiueo 2y ago
    To this I can't relate at all. If you can't use a library because it's GPLv3, then the company would need to invest some time and money into reimplementing the features they want. Guess who gets more paid work?
    • cosmic_cheese 2y ago
      Depends on the constraints. You might not get to build that proper reimplementation and instead get stuck with quickly duct taping together a rough approximation that never gets the requisite time and resources to make it good, whereafter it becomes a persistent thorn in your side until you change jobs.
  • pjmlp 2y ago
    Still that enough isn't working for most of my customers, without an assessment from legal and IT, many times getting a commercial one is much easier.
• andybak 2y ago
  > Do you enjoy your project getting forked, walled off and exploited for profit by someone who has never done you any good? By far the biggest risk for most projects is "nobody notices it and nobody uses it". And if someone "takes" your project and uses it - you've usually still got it. Software is funny like that.
  • koiueo 2y ago
    If the project is good, the license is hardly ever an obstacle for adoption. At least I can't recall any such cases. Do you have any examples?
    • KTibow 2y ago
      If it's GPL-like its usage would be mostly confined to open source projects.
      • maleldil 2y ago
        That's the whole point. If you build something on top of open source code, your code should be open source too.
        • frumplestlatz 2y ago
          Those of us who disagree are happy to see our software used in any context in exchange for attribution. The problem that occurred in this case is someone at Microsoft taking the code without following the license at all.
        • andybak 2y ago
          Even if this is the case I might not want my library or application to be copyleft. Or even if I do - I might not want everyone else in perpetuity who uses my code to have to use a copyleft licence. This goes back to the fact that not everyone can choose to use a GPL licence and in a world of compromise and collaboration, that can be a blocker.
    • 2y ago
• boramalper 2y ago
  As @diggan wrote[0] elsewhere in the thread, the issue is not that MIT is permissive but that Microsoft did not honor the requirements of the license (despite it being permissive!): > Does it matter what license you use if they actively ignore the terms in the license you did chose? MIT requires attribution, but they didn't. Why would any other terms be different? You surely could have put "You must license your project the same as the one you forked from" and they still would have ignored it, not sure what the difference would have been. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43750670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43750670
• nu11ptr 2y ago
  One should choose a license that fits them. The problem with GPL licenses is they are viral and non-permissive. As a developer, as soon as I see the GPL I just click away to another repo no matter how good the lib is. I don't want people doing that to my projects, so I use Apache/MIT or whatever the permissive license that is most prominent for the language I'm using.
  • krupan 2y ago
    Hi! Do you work for Microsoft? There is nothing "non-permissive" about the GPL. You can use the code however you want. "Viral" is a perjorative description that Microsoft pioneered the use of to describe the GPL. The GPL is not a virus that latches onto any code it gets near, without anyone's permission. You should not use that term.
    • nu11ptr 2y ago
      > The GPL is not a virus that latches onto any code it gets near Honestly, that is EXACTLY how I feel about it. If I use GPL code in my code then my code must also be GPL (if I distribute). The term seems to fit to me. And no, I've never worked for MS.
      • krupan 2y ago
        Viruses are things that latch onto other things without their permission. If you choose to build off of GPL code then yes, you must preserve the GPL license. There's an important difference. It's actually the same as any other copyrighted code (and in the US, all code is automatically copyrighted and restricted). You cannot just take code and use it in your project. GPL code is nothing special.
        • nu11ptr 2y ago
          It is very easy to accidently use a GPL library without knowing it, especially if it is a dependency of a dependency and you aren't using a license scanner.
• jandrewrogers 2y ago
  The great thing about permissive licenses is that it maximizes the utility of the code. I don’t care if someone makes a mountain of money by forking my permissively licensed code, that is in some sense the objective and I lose nothing by it. This strain of rent-seeking behavior by some that open source their code but then believe they are entitled to compensation or forced contributions if the wrong people use it per license is distasteful and a bad look. It highlights the extent to which for many people the motivations behind their “open source” are not actually, you know, open source. For many, open source is about the utility of the source code and nothing more. Licenses like AGPLv3 aren’t just about the utility of open source, they try to litigate concepts like fairness and justice at the same time, and open source isn’t a great venue for that.
  • krupan 2y ago
    I'm sorry, but you are way off base. Use is not restricted by GPL licenses. People have expressed desires to restrict use of GPL code (what if terrorists or pedophiles or Republicans use this code??) and Stallman and it's defenders have not allowed any restrictions of use.
    • jandrewrogers 2y ago
      GPL code does not exist in a vacuum. To be maximally useful, GPL code must coexist with source code subject to different legal, regulatory, and licensing regimes. GPL use is only “not restricted” if you completely ignore that compliance with GPL can unavoidably result in civil and criminal liability. Sure, those potential users are not required to avoid civil and criminal liability but that is not a serious argument. Permissive licenses generally allow source code to coexist within almost any legal scenario into which source code may be placed. This is why I only use permissive licenses both for my own open source and for the open source I use.
      • krupan 2y ago
        I don't think you understand the difference between use and distribution, between running code and copying code. All source code is automatically copyrighted and restricted (at least in the US) and you must follow copyright laws and license agreements for all source code that you copy and distribute. GPL licensed code is not special in this regard. How you use GPL software has zero restrictions.
• matkoniecz 2y ago
  > What's good about being "permissive"? it is good if you do not plan to go for violators anyway I made some photos and published them on Wikimedia Commons (say, of random bicycle infrastructure). I am fine with people using them without attribution, I expect that their use overall furthers my goals rather than damages it and if I would release it on CC-BY-SA 4.0 or similar I would not go to court over missing attribution. Therefore I selected CC0, no reason to make things more complicated only to people following license. I selected AGPL/GPL for some software where I would be happy to burn pile of money in case of license violation, up to and including litigating it in court for 10 years.
  • trelane 2y ago
    You might not care, but your downstream users might care about being locked in.
• bigstrat2003 2y ago
  > What's good about being "permissive"? For me personally, because I believe in freedom and permissive licenses grant more freedom than others do. I don't really care for licenses which attach unnecessary strings to what recipients can and cannot do with the software.
• atomicnumber3 2y ago
  It's bizarre to me how, despite people criticizing the GPL and GNU as too ideological, the people you refer to - the permissive people - somehow seem even MORE ideological. The GPL to me seems pragmatic - sure technically a minimal license like WTFPL (ignore all its legal issues for now) is some kind of minimalist idea of pure objective freedom. But the GPL has some key "restrictions" that aren't really restrictions and produce an ecosystem that WORKS. Meanwhile the permissive ecosystem is just waiting to be scooped up by bigcos at their whim.
  • asddubs 2y ago
    well, it's worth noting that since microsoft is also releasing the source code, the same thing could have happened with GPL. Though I suspect the author would be even less happy if they had done all the same stuff (minus removing the copyright notice, even) and then not released the source, so that's not me arguing against the GPL I also think in practice microsoft would have been less likely to actually take the code, and probably would just have reimplemented the ideas in it if it was GPL
    • oehpr 2y ago
      Just wanted to highlight your last point so that it's clear. Microsoft reimplementing the authors project was exactly what they wanted! To see a different implementation. A different "take".
• klabb3 2y ago
  These days there is almost nothing good with permissive if your project gets used by mega corps specifically. They don’t want your opinions, your expertise, they don’t want to share anything back, they won’t pay you, and they will even avoid giving credit – the lowest of the low. And somehow we’re still worrying about inconveniencing megacorps as if that mattered, at all! I would love a license that says if your company has a physical presence in 10+ countries, one of its executive owns a yacht, or even is publicly listed, you need to purchase a license from the owners. (As a bonus, if the company is primarily selling subscriptions, the license should be in subscription form in return). Free (GPL/MIT/whatever) for everyone else. Even such a crude stupid license would be an improvement over today for many. Most importantly I think a large amount of code is already closed today, because of the risks. This results in worse technical solutions, eg SaaS instead of libs & docker images that are easy to fix yourself. I don’t understand the fear mongering about licenses that Amazon and Microsoft don’t like. At the absolute minimum, contribute the changes back.
• overfeed 2y ago
  > What's good about being "permissive"? They want widespread usage of their project, but always decry not like that when Amazon or Microsoft is responsible for the usage.
• kweingar 2y ago
  This is the reason why I am so confused by the strain of open source thought which says that large companies exploit OSS maintainers and ought to pay them. Maintainers often pick permissive licenses specifically because they want companies to use the code. They want their project to grow and be adopted, and they reason that GPL would stifle adoption. I don't really like the tactic of making your code as convenient as possible for anyone to grab off the shelf when they want to use it, and then later turning around and saying they should pay you. Why not do the payment part up front (by GPL-licensing the code and then selling dual licenses to interested companies)? Because then you wouldn't have any takers. Better to wait until people have integrated it into their systems before informing them that they ought to pay you.
  • laeri 2y ago
    The author didn't seem to request payment in monetary form but expected some kind of contributions back which would have helped both sides. It would probably be difficult to include some guarantees about upstream contributions into the license but interesting takeaway.
    • ahepp 2y ago
      Doesn't that bring us right back to GPL family licenses?
      • pabs3 2y ago
        The GPL doesn't require contributing back, only contributing forward to users.
        • kweingar 2y ago
          With GPL you don't have to actively work to upstream your patches, but in practice you can't withhold your patches from upstream. If you add a feature, they get to have it too. Unlike permissively licensed software, where you can add proprietary features.
• stogot 2y ago
  I think for me, I’ve been a beneficiary of using MIT licenses (in minor ways, no large or famous projects) and so when I publish code I prefer sharing as MIT. Maybe I should reconsider, but I never thought anyone would remove an MIT license. That sounds like plagiarism (though they did put a thank you in their repo)
• golergka 2y ago
  > exploited for profit by someone who has never done you any good Yes, that's the whole point of open source? Most contributions to the most popular libraries and frameworks (not necessarily end products) are from employees on their paid corporate time to begin with.
  • koiueo 2y ago
    > Most contributions How did you count? > most popular libraries How did you measure? I agree this is the case for Linux kernel, for example. But I don't know if it applies to entire ecosystem. > Yes, that's the whole point of open source? I think it's a gross oversimplification. For some reason there is not much code in public domain. People do want different things in exchange for their work. Hence different licenses. Some want to receive credit for their work, some want to enrich the opensource ecosystem, make it more sustainable. Which brings me to my final point. > are from employees on their paid corporate time to begin with It's natural for companies to open their code under permissive licenses. Very often such code is just a first free sample of whatever they are selling: consulting services, a SaaS, etc.. So it makes sense to have an attitude "do whatever with the code, just please-please-please use it". For an individual developer working on a one-man project the incentives structure can't be similar to one of a company. Hence my trouble understating why people pick MIT/Apache/BSD for their projects.
• calibas 2y ago
  It's very simple, the reason people favor a more permissive license is generally the same reason they open source their code: You want other people to use your project. Obviously, a more permissive license is going to let people do whatever they want with "your" code, as it doesn't really belong to you anymore. If you want tight control then it's a bad choice, but a more permissive license is almost always going to mean your project is more widely used, for better or worse.
• aftbit 2y ago
  It means that more people and companies can use your software. Plenty of orgs will avoid GPL and especially AGPL software out of an abundance of caution or because they legitimately need to link and customize the software for it to be useful for their business case, but do not want to release these (often very small & customer dependant) modifications.
• roguecoder 2y ago
  Permissive licenses are about contributing to the trade as a whole, rather than individualism. Some of us don't believe that the code we write is "ours" in any meaningful way, and don't think strangers using it have any obligation to us just because we typed it once long ago. Personally, I am happy if my code is of use. If people are using it for evil I'll fight the evil, not try to withhold good things from the world to avoid that possible case. It is an approach that is rooted in sufficiency mindset, rather than capitalistic notions of false scarcity. My project being forked doesn't cost me anything at all, but caring about it being forked or enforcing a license would cost me time and energy I have no desire to spend. Permissive licenses accurately communicate the levels of fucks I give, while keeping assholes from trying to sue me over having used my contributions to the collective wealth of the profession. If I make the world better for everyone, of course a bunch of people who never did anything for me are going to be a part of "everyone", basically by definition. What is wild here is that Microsoft didn't follow the extremely minimal requirements of the permissive license.
• guywithahat 2y ago
  Because when people start an OS project, they want to help people and grow. MIT license is the best license if your goal is to help other people. It's the worst license for building a business, but that's usually not what people think about when starting a project
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• windward 2y ago
  Due to some quirks of software developer hiring practices, people write OSS not because they want to write OSS, but because they want the kudos of having written OSS. The downside is someone might use their OSS.