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> If you care about your users, you should always prefer some copyleft license. There is no possible way for users to be hurt by a permissive license. Even if
by bigstrat2003 1y ago
> If you care about your users, you should always prefer some copyleft license.
There is no possible way for users to be hurt by a permissive license. Even if some company were to make a closed source fork, who cares? The original is still there, still just as free as it ever was.
> Prefer permissive licenses only if you want to subsidize big business. Hopefully you have a plan for when they decide to take it closed-source and outcompete you.
I prefer permissive licenses because I'm making a gift to the commons. It strikes me as hypocritical to say "I'm giving this to you, but only if you things the way I approve of". Thus, I make it completely free for all users, whatever they want to do with it. You may not see it that way, which is fine. But I'm sick of the false idea of "you're just subsidizing big business" being promulgated. That isn't true.
And why would I care if someone "outcompetes" me? My gift to society is still there to be used if people want, or not if they don't want. It doesn't diminish or harm my efforts in any way.
- dedup 1y ago> Even if some company were to make a closed source fork, who cares? They can add sufficiently popular functionality to said closed source fork and make the open source original a) obsolete and b) incompatible with the combined ecosystem, and thus deprive the users of a feasible free option.
- catach 1y agoIf the closed fork functionality is superior enough to make the original de facto obsolete then the users have already collectively decided that the tradeoff is worth it. And if the original can't compete it means the additional functionality was only going to exist because the financial model of the closed fork could pay for it.
- lurk2 1y ago> If the closed fork functionality is superior enough to make the original de facto obsolete then the users have already collectively decided that the tradeoff is worth it. Users cannot be trusted to make their own decisions about these kinds of things for the same reason that corporations cannot be trusted to be environmental stewards and children cannot be trusted to select a dinner menu or file taxes.
- bheadmaster 1y ago> And if the original can't compete it means the additional functionality was only going to exist because the financial model of the closed fork could pay for it. This completely disregards the fact that the "financial model of the closed fork" explicitly chose to build upon the permissively licensed original. If the company chooses to build upon free software, they should be obligated to give back to the community from which they leech. Otherwise, they should just build their own thing from scratch with all the money they've hoarded, and keep it closed.
- immibis 1y agoYou know what would be even better? If the new functionality was open. The original can't compete because the original author used a permissive license. Do you want to make yourself not compete?
- em-bee 1y agoat the expense of the original developer whose work was taken advantage of without giving anything back or paying it forward.
- happymellon 1y agoThat's not the only reason it would become the defacto standard, and it's naive to claim so. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu... Users can get a bundled version that slowly breaks compatibility forcing vendors to align with the closed source version.
- catach 1y agoIt would indeed be naive to make that claim, so it's a good thing that's not what I did.
- happymellon 1y ago> If the closed fork functionality is superior enough to make the original de facto obsolete then the users have already collectively decided that the tradeoff is worth it. I'm afraid you did. Users are lazy, and IE and Java on Windows are great examples.
- o11c 1y agoAs a reminder, the GPL (or any other Free Software license, by definition - it's "Freedom 0" in the list) places absolutely no restrictions on users. Its provisions only kick in for those who want to go beyond merely using the software.
- TuxSH 1y ago> or any other Free Software license That's not quite true of AGPL (and for this very reason some companies, e.g. in the database provider space, use it for free versions of otherwise paid products)
- o11c 1y agoOn the contrary, that's just FUD they spread. Section 13 of the AGPL (the part that's not in the GPL) explicitly begins with "[notwithstanding,] if you modify the program [and allow users to access it over the network]". Merely using the upstream version is no burden.
- MangoToupe 1y ago> But I'm sick of the false idea of "you're just subsidizing big business" being promulgated. That isn't true. All the permissively licensed code that came with my mac disagrees. This is even more true of iphone software: you can technically look at some of the code that comes with it, but you can't modify it.
- wisty 1y agoSo it sucks to have iPhones?
- lukan 1y agoYeah, the idea here seems to be, iPhones would be open hackable devices if only more people would use copyleft licences, but in reality Apple would still lockdown their gadgets and just write the software themself if no permissive licence is avaiable.
- msgodel 1y agoI think if copyleft were more common fewer people would tolerate iPhones.
- rcxdude 1y agoThat would require a far larger fraction of the general population to give a shit about any software license than currently.
- fn-mote 1y ago> in reality Apple would still lockdown their gadgets and just write the software themself if no permissive licence [were] available This is a common opinion, but seems uninformed to me. The free code helped them get started. They are Goliath now, but the benefitted from not having to do the R&D earlier. I don’t know if they could have done the R&D. I definitely imagine it would not have been as good as the product they got from using BSD. Anyway, I believe this kind of thinking is a shallow dismissal of the value that companies receive from starting from Libre software.
- 0xEF 1y agoI have a different take on permission license. I offer up what little code I produce under the assumption that anyone can use it for whatever, just give me credit. Why? Because it might result in an interesting collaboration on a project I like. If someone uses my existing code to accomplish something neat and sees who I am, they can reach out to me for more, which I'm open to since it would likely result in some growth for me as an amateur. I'm not particularly interested in making money since I recognize that I am nowhere near that level, yet, but creating a future opportunity seems like a good idea since I enjoy coding.
- jampekka 1y ago> There is no possible way for users to be hurt by a permissive license. Even if some company were to make a closed source fork, who cares? The original is still there, still just as free as it ever was. The users of the closed source fork are harmed. They are unable to use the software to the full extent (e.g. inspect, modify, fix bugs). This is what copyleft intends to protect. Closed source reduces the software into an appliance and the user into a consumer.
- bityard 1y agoThe users of the closed fork always had the ability (if not duty) to inspect the program's licence before using it.