3 ms·

I have mixed feelings about this. On paper you're of course right and a copyleft license would be better, but in practice I don't think it matters all that much

by crote 1y ago

I have mixed feelings about this. On paper you're of course right and a copyleft license would be better, but in practice I don't think it matters all that much for something as small as coreutils. It's just yet another implementation of a standardized interface, nobody is going to fork it and build a billion-dollar business around it. Any change or improvement is probably worth more when upstreamed than when kept in a proprietary fork, just because your maintenance burden is lessened. Besides, we've evolved a bit since the 90s/00s: the main risk to software freedom is no longer binary blobs but cloud services - and the GPL doesn't save you there. And any license requiring disclosing your coreutils to anyone accessing your computer over the internet would be a massive dealbreaker to most people...

endgame 1y ago
But the large volume of copyleft does make it much easier for all the BSD/MIT/X11/ISC ("permissively licenced") stuff to show up in e.g., enterprise Linux distribution releases, under the "we have to do it anyway for all these other packages, so we may as well do it for all the FOSS code that we use" type of argument. There was a kerfuffle with RHEL a couple of years back, where they tried to provide sources only to paying customers. Not sure where that ends up.
heavyset_go 1y ago
Coreutils licensing is just one part of the amalgamation that prevents the Nintendo Switch-ification (it's based on FreeBSD) of entire free software stacks. Not only do non-Switch users not benefit from changes, the entity that made billions on top of free software then uses that war chest to sue free software developers into oblivion. I think licensing is an important way to prevent those types of abuses, and to maximize users' benefits.
- jchw 1y ago
  The "Horizon" OS used on the Nintendo Switch is not FreeBSD-based, it merely contains some FreeBSD code, but is largely, as far as I am aware, a home-grown proprietary operating system not substantially based on any "free" system. The Sony PlayStation 4 (and probably PlayStation 5) actually are substantially based on FreeBSD, though.

by crote 1y ago

endgame 1y ago

But the large volume of copyleft does make it much easier for all the BSD/MIT/X11/ISC ("permissively licenced") stuff to show up in e.g., enterprise Linux distribution releases, under the "we have to do it anyway for all these other packages, so we may as well do it for all the FOSS code that we use" type of argument. There was a kerfuffle with RHEL a couple of years back, where they tried to provide sources only to paying customers. Not sure where that ends up.

heavyset_go 1y ago

Coreutils licensing is just one part of the amalgamation that prevents the Nintendo Switch-ification (it's based on FreeBSD) of entire free software stacks. Not only do non-Switch users not benefit from changes, the entity that made billions on top of free software then uses that war chest to sue free software developers into oblivion. I think licensing is an important way to prevent those types of abuses, and to maximize users' benefits.

jchw 1y ago
The "Horizon" OS used on the Nintendo Switch is not FreeBSD-based, it merely contains some FreeBSD code, but is largely, as far as I am aware, a home-grown proprietary operating system not substantially based on any "free" system. The Sony PlayStation 4 (and probably PlayStation 5) actually are substantially based on FreeBSD, though.