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Most users and contributors put the functionality above copyleft. You are a minority. The article doesn't imply that you don't exist. It implies that copyleft p

Most users and contributors put the functionality above copyleft. You are a minority. The article doesn't imply that you don't exist. It implies that copyleft projects such as yours will be largely pushed out of the mainstream. And that it will happen even faster when a project is clearly inferior and can't offer anything that's not offered by a permissive project that can be used anywhere without legal headaches. Such permissive projects will always spead and develop faster, all other things being equal

alpaca128 1y ago
> Most users and contributors put the functionality above copyleft Most users put functionality above the license, copyleft or not. Among two comparable projects one will always be more popular and I highly doubt the license is often a deciding factor for that. > It implies that copyleft projects such as yours will be largely pushed out of the mainstream Those CAD projects were never in the mainstream to begin with. And FreeCAD might have a niche target audience but for me it has no viable competitor. The situation got better in recent years but I don't see why I should make myself dependent on a subscription based commercial project that's incompatible with everything else including other products from the same company. > Such permissive projects will always spead and develop faster, all other things being equal Such as? Wouldn't one expect BSD systems to have overtaken Linux in the last three decades with that assumption?
- Expurple 1y ago
  I wasn't there, but the narrative online seems to be that Linux won due to its strong momentum and the leading position that it established back in the 90s, while the BSDs were held back by the AT&T lawsuit. Due to this leading position and the network effect, using and contributing to Linux is simply much more cost-effective. Privately forking a BSD and making it "better" than Linux would give you a competitive advantage, sure. But it's a prohibitively expensive thing to do. In other words, it's a historical accident that there was no strong BSD alternative when Linux was picking up steam. Now it's too big to fail, and the GPL works in full force. GPL can't work in full force in the early stages of a project.

alpaca128 1y ago

> Most users and contributors put the functionality above copyleft Most users put functionality above the license, copyleft or not. Among two comparable projects one will always be more popular and I highly doubt the license is often a deciding factor for that. > It implies that copyleft projects such as yours will be largely pushed out of the mainstream Those CAD projects were never in the mainstream to begin with. And FreeCAD might have a niche target audience but for me it has no viable competitor. The situation got better in recent years but I don't see why I should make myself dependent on a subscription based commercial project that's incompatible with everything else including other products from the same company. > Such permissive projects will always spead and develop faster, all other things being equal Such as? Wouldn't one expect BSD systems to have overtaken Linux in the last three decades with that assumption?

Expurple 1y ago
I wasn't there, but the narrative online seems to be that Linux won due to its strong momentum and the leading position that it established back in the 90s, while the BSDs were held back by the AT&T lawsuit. Due to this leading position and the network effect, using and contributing to Linux is simply much more cost-effective. Privately forking a BSD and making it "better" than Linux would give you a competitive advantage, sure. But it's a prohibitively expensive thing to do. In other words, it's a historical accident that there was no strong BSD alternative when Linux was picking up steam. Now it's too big to fail, and the GPL works in full force. GPL can't work in full force in the early stages of a project.