4 ms·

Permissive licenses enable small or individual developers (like myself) to sell software based on them. With copyleft licenses, developers always have to sell

by jjcob 1y ago

Permissive licenses enable small or individual developers (like myself) to sell software based on them. With copyleft licenses, developers always have to sell stuff adjacent to the software (support, individual development, software-as-a-service). With permissive licenses, developers can just sell a license to the software itself. Much easier, much more direct. It's the reason why there is much more tooling around permissive licensed projects vs. projects with a GPL style license. Permissive licenses are win-win: Proprietory developers win because they get to sell licenses, users win because they have more tools they can use.

o11c 1y ago
That does not follow. You might as well make it "source available" and sell proprietary licenses.
- jjcob 1y ago
  I think you misunderstood. My software is not permissive. My software is closed source, but based on a big open source project with a permissive license. It's a tool that helps users of the big open source solution. I can sell licenses to my tool because it is closed source. If the big open source project was licensed under a copyleft license, I would have to make my tool open source as well. Then I would have a hard time selling licenses. I couldn't have spent the last 10 years building a tool for the open source software, and users of the open source software would have had fewer tools available.
  - mistercheph 1y ago
    Your personal financial incentives < humanity. I would rather you had a harder time selling licenses if it meant the ecosystem around whatever big project you're talking about was compelled to contribute to the commons in the same way that the big project does. Proprietary software is the dead or soon to die branches of the tree of human development, may spawn some useful insights that will ultimately be applied elsewhere, and may be profitable and useful in the short term, but the branch dies, I don't want to subsidize dead branches, and I don't want to write software that enables people to make more of them, even if some of those branches might be nice to hang on for a while.
sampullman 1y ago
I'm not completely familiar with the details and haven't done it myself, but what's stopping you from selling non-restrictive licenses to a GPL project? Can't you just etch out an exception for each customer?
- jjcob 1y ago
  I'm not sure what you are suggesting. My tool is classic shareware: You download a free version, and if you like it you pay to remove feature restrictions. Companies pay per device the tool runs on. I'm not sure how I would implement this when distributing a GPL licensed program? Customers could just remove the license checking code and distribute it for free?
  - gpderetta 1y ago
    I don't understand, a shareware software is not permissively licensed.
    - bityard 1y ago
      jjcob is taking a permissively licensed project and selling a closed-source product derived from it. That's why they are arguing against copyleft in this thread.
      - gpderetta 1y ago
        right, so jjcob is saying that it is better for others write permissively licensed software so that jjcob can use it for their restrictively licensed software. That's obviously good for jjcob, but I'm not sure how that benefits anybody else.
        jjcob 1y ago
        I'm building a tool that makes working with the big open source project easier for some users. It makes the open source project accessible for more users. In theory, it would be nice if my tool was open source / free to use. But nobody makes a tool like mine for free, because it is a lot of work and not essential for using the open source software. The kind of people who need it are not programmers and extremely unlikely to come together to fund an open source version of my tool. My contribution is that I make the big open source project accessible to more people. (Aside from contributing back to the project, which is in my own interest, because contributing fixes is easier than maintaining a fork. A lot of contributions to this open source project come from proprietary software vendors like myself.) (Sorry for the generic description, I'm trying not to dox myself on HN...)
MangoToupe 1y ago
I just don't really want to support the sale of any software. I see it as directly harmful compared to subsidizing the development of modifiable, free software, which is the true allure of computation.
tmtvl 1y ago
Users lose because the tools with the most functionality, the applications with the most interoperability, the software with the most mindshare,... will be proprietary software.
sparkie 1y ago
There are alternatives. We can dual license software under a strong copyleft and a proprietary license, so that users (developers) who don't want their derived software to be copyleft can pay the proprietary license fee. IMO this is the approach that everyone should be taking - it rewards the developer rather than them subsidizing your derived works with their free time. Obviously this has constraints. The developer must have full rights or ownership to redistribute the work under other licenses. This can be obtained from contributors via agreement, where every developer retains ownership of code they write, but grants permission to relicense it for the benefit the project. Ideally, contributors would also be rewarded for their time via bounty systems, contracts or direct employment. It's possible to make non-derived works which utilize copyleft software. The license's conditions apply only to the derived works, and not directly to your code unless it unquestionably a derived work such as a fork. If your application is written in a way that it can function without dependency on a copyleft software, but can be augmented using copyleft software using a plugin system, then you're able to distribute your software under any license you chose, and only the plugin which uses the copyleft software would be required to be licensed under a compatible license. The "aggregate" would need to be distributed under the copyleft license - but there are also ways around that - simply distribute your software without the dependency on the copyleft work, and have it optionally download the copyleft plugins separately so that they're not part of the "aggregate". Permissive licensing won't sustain itself unless the developers who depend on it start donating to the maintainers of the permissively licensed works they depend on. In some cases this happens, but mostly it's just the case that you can make money using software other people have given away and continue to maintain for free. What happens if they decide to stop maintaining it? Is your product still viable if you have to take over the task, or employ someone new to maintain it? Would it be viable if you, or your users, had to purchase a proprietary license fee for an alternative dependency?
- jjcob 1y ago
  Your logic seems to assume that there two disjoint groups of people: 1. Developers who work on the open source project 2. Developers who work on proprietary software based on the open source project In reality these groups overlap. Developers contribute to the open source project, and they also work on their own software based on the open source project. If you look at the git logs of successful permissive open source projects, you'll see that a lot of the development time comes from developers who work for proprietary software companies.
wolvesechoes 1y ago
You can sell GPL software. You can even sell GPL software under proprietary license as long as you are the copyright owner (dual-licensing). Really, when you take time to understand real restrictions, as opposed to repeated myths, the only argument in favor of permissive license is that they help big players use free labor.
- mr_toad 1y ago
  You don’t even need to be the copyright owner to sell GPL software, but it’s unlikely many would pay for it.
  - bheadmaster 1y ago
    > You don't even need to be the copyright owner to sell GPL software You do, if sell means also allowing another vendor to use your software as a part of their proprietary software. GPL alone, if you're not the copyright owner, would not allow you to sell software in this way. But if you are the copyright owner, you can bypass GPL and sell a proprietary license to the vendor saying "you can use this software in your proprietary product if you pay me $XYZ".
    - bheadmaster 1y ago
      For anyone who thinks I'm talking out of my ass, consider Qt. If you don't own the Qt copyright, you cannot sell Qt to a company who wants to use it to build a proprietary product - since Qt is GPL licensed, using it in a proprietary product would not be permitted. But since The Qt Company owns the copyright, they can sell their own software to companies that want to build a proprietary product with it - they just sell it under a proprietary license, specifically tailored for this. The fact that it was previously released under GPL is irrelevant, because the copyright holder can license it under as many licenses as they want. If you don't own the copyright to it, you can only """sell""" GPL software in a manner in which local DVD shops sold pirated movies back in the early 2000s.
    - kmacleod 1y ago
      Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, and myself, among many, "sell" GPL software that are used by others as part of their proprietary products. Each of those, and the customers, are required to make the source they received (not their own proprietary source), including changes, available to those that receive the software (thus indirectly back to the public and the authors). AGPL is similar but includes the case of providing sources for products used in Internet services.
bityard 1y ago
Why do you believe you can't sell copyleft software?

by jjcob 1y ago

o11c 1y ago

That does not follow. You might as well make it "source available" and sell proprietary licenses.

jjcob 1y ago
I think you misunderstood. My software is not permissive. My software is closed source, but based on a big open source project with a permissive license. It's a tool that helps users of the big open source solution. I can sell licenses to my tool because it is closed source. If the big open source project was licensed under a copyleft license, I would have to make my tool open source as well. Then I would have a hard time selling licenses. I couldn't have spent the last 10 years building a tool for the open source software, and users of the open source software would have had fewer tools available.
- mistercheph 1y ago
  Your personal financial incentives < humanity. I would rather you had a harder time selling licenses if it meant the ecosystem around whatever big project you're talking about was compelled to contribute to the commons in the same way that the big project does. Proprietary software is the dead or soon to die branches of the tree of human development, may spawn some useful insights that will ultimately be applied elsewhere, and may be profitable and useful in the short term, but the branch dies, I don't want to subsidize dead branches, and I don't want to write software that enables people to make more of them, even if some of those branches might be nice to hang on for a while.

sampullman 1y ago

I'm not completely familiar with the details and haven't done it myself, but what's stopping you from selling non-restrictive licenses to a GPL project? Can't you just etch out an exception for each customer?

jjcob 1y ago
I'm not sure what you are suggesting. My tool is classic shareware: You download a free version, and if you like it you pay to remove feature restrictions. Companies pay per device the tool runs on. I'm not sure how I would implement this when distributing a GPL licensed program? Customers could just remove the license checking code and distribute it for free?
- gpderetta 1y ago
  I don't understand, a shareware software is not permissively licensed.
  - bityard 1y ago
    jjcob is taking a permissively licensed project and selling a closed-source product derived from it. That's why they are arguing against copyleft in this thread.
    - gpderetta 1y ago
      right, so jjcob is saying that it is better for others write permissively licensed software so that jjcob can use it for their restrictively licensed software. That's obviously good for jjcob, but I'm not sure how that benefits anybody else.
      - jjcob 1y ago
        I'm building a tool that makes working with the big open source project easier for some users. It makes the open source project accessible for more users. In theory, it would be nice if my tool was open source / free to use. But nobody makes a tool like mine for free, because it is a lot of work and not essential for using the open source software. The kind of people who need it are not programmers and extremely unlikely to come together to fund an open source version of my tool. My contribution is that I make the big open source project accessible to more people. (Aside from contributing back to the project, which is in my own interest, because contributing fixes is easier than maintaining a fork. A lot of contributions to this open source project come from proprietary software vendors like myself.) (Sorry for the generic description, I'm trying not to dox myself on HN...)

MangoToupe 1y ago

I just don't really want to support the sale of any software. I see it as directly harmful compared to subsidizing the development of modifiable, free software, which is the true allure of computation.

tmtvl 1y ago

Users lose because the tools with the most functionality, the applications with the most interoperability, the software with the most mindshare,... will be proprietary software.

sparkie 1y ago

There are alternatives. We can dual license software under a strong copyleft and a proprietary license, so that users (developers) who don't want their derived software to be copyleft can pay the proprietary license fee. IMO this is the approach that everyone should be taking - it rewards the developer rather than them subsidizing your derived works with their free time. Obviously this has constraints. The developer must have full rights or ownership to redistribute the work under other licenses. This can be obtained from contributors via agreement, where every developer retains ownership of code they write, but grants permission to relicense it for the benefit the project. Ideally, contributors would also be rewarded for their time via bounty systems, contracts or direct employment. It's possible to make non-derived works which utilize copyleft software. The license's conditions apply only to the derived works, and not directly to your code unless it unquestionably a derived work such as a fork. If your application is written in a way that it can function without dependency on a copyleft software, but can be augmented using copyleft software using a plugin system, then you're able to distribute your software under any license you chose, and only the plugin which uses the copyleft software would be required to be licensed under a compatible license. The "aggregate" would need to be distributed under the copyleft license - but there are also ways around that - simply distribute your software without the dependency on the copyleft work, and have it optionally download the copyleft plugins separately so that they're not part of the "aggregate". Permissive licensing won't sustain itself unless the developers who depend on it start donating to the maintainers of the permissively licensed works they depend on. In some cases this happens, but mostly it's just the case that you can make money using software other people have given away and continue to maintain for free. What happens if they decide to stop maintaining it? Is your product still viable if you have to take over the task, or employ someone new to maintain it? Would it be viable if you, or your users, had to purchase a proprietary license fee for an alternative dependency?

jjcob 1y ago
Your logic seems to assume that there two disjoint groups of people: 1. Developers who work on the open source project 2. Developers who work on proprietary software based on the open source project In reality these groups overlap. Developers contribute to the open source project, and they also work on their own software based on the open source project. If you look at the git logs of successful permissive open source projects, you'll see that a lot of the development time comes from developers who work for proprietary software companies.

wolvesechoes 1y ago

You can sell GPL software. You can even sell GPL software under proprietary license as long as you are the copyright owner (dual-licensing). Really, when you take time to understand real restrictions, as opposed to repeated myths, the only argument in favor of permissive license is that they help big players use free labor.

mr_toad 1y ago
You don’t even need to be the copyright owner to sell GPL software, but it’s unlikely many would pay for it.
- bheadmaster 1y ago
  > You don't even need to be the copyright owner to sell GPL software You do, if sell means also allowing another vendor to use your software as a part of their proprietary software. GPL alone, if you're not the copyright owner, would not allow you to sell software in this way. But if you are the copyright owner, you can bypass GPL and sell a proprietary license to the vendor saying "you can use this software in your proprietary product if you pay me $XYZ".
  - bheadmaster 1y ago
    For anyone who thinks I'm talking out of my ass, consider Qt. If you don't own the Qt copyright, you cannot sell Qt to a company who wants to use it to build a proprietary product - since Qt is GPL licensed, using it in a proprietary product would not be permitted. But since The Qt Company owns the copyright, they can sell their own software to companies that want to build a proprietary product with it - they just sell it under a proprietary license, specifically tailored for this. The fact that it was previously released under GPL is irrelevant, because the copyright holder can license it under as many licenses as they want. If you don't own the copyright to it, you can only """sell""" GPL software in a manner in which local DVD shops sold pirated movies back in the early 2000s.
  - kmacleod 1y ago
    Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, and myself, among many, "sell" GPL software that are used by others as part of their proprietary products. Each of those, and the customers, are required to make the source they received (not their own proprietary source), including changes, available to those that receive the software (thus indirectly back to the public and the authors). AGPL is similar but includes the case of providing sources for products used in Internet services.

bityard 1y ago

Why do you believe you can't sell copyleft software?