8 ms·

Nobody needed to "brainwash" me into choosing the MIT license for my projects. I choose it because I disagree with the philosophy of the GPL, and think that tru

by bigstrat2003 1y ago

Nobody needed to "brainwash" me into choosing the MIT license for my projects. I choose it because I disagree with the philosophy of the GPL, and think that true freedom requires the freedom for others to make their own licensing choices. You are quite welcome to disagree with that stance, but please cut out the inflammatory language. It's not charitable towards others and it isn't healthy for good discussion.

oliwarner 1y ago
Despite anyone's personal views, it's undeniable that corps favour a Free they can use as they wish. It's also fairly evident that they make this favour known through their culture. Brainwashing may be a bit far, but only just. All for naught, I fear, while LLMs consume all and regurgitate license-free to vibe-coders everywhere.
goku12 1y ago
> You are quite welcome to disagree with that stance, but please cut out the inflammatory language. It's not charitable towards others and it isn't healthy for good discussion. It is no more inflammatory than the coordinated war that was waged against copyleft licenses on tech fora and social media for more than a decade before hackers started to realize en masse that it was all a ploy to extract free labor from them. There are legitimate uses for permissive licenses and I still use them for those. But the big players certainly pushed them well beyond those cases where they made any sense. More than enough evidence has since emerged that prove this to be the case. It does no one any favors to deny the presence of bad actors and their malintent behind the utter mess we find ourselves in right now. I find it disturbing that whenever people express their frustration regarding this, there are attempts to shoot them down with accusations of inflammatory language, political correctness, etc. But the truth is that the big players have caused far far more damage than any inflammatory citicism they face for it now. What's actually unhealthy for good discussion is the dystopian censorship of criticisms because the truth make some people uncomfortable. Every bit of harsh criticism they receive here is something they willfully and rightfully earned.
- embedding-shape 1y ago
  > What's actually unhealthy for good discussion is the dystopian censorship of criticisms because the truth make some people uncomfortable I think you're missing the point. There are developers who prefer MIT not because they're a "big player" or "because truth make people uncomfortable", people simply have different preference for what the ideal license is for their project. If you cannot deal with that, that sounds like a you problem, but judging by your comments, you're not exactly gonna re-evaluate with a different perspective, since you seem unable to understand others have different ideas and opinions than you.
  - fsflover 1y ago
    The parent did say > There are legitimate uses for permissive licenses and I still use them for those. The parent didn't talk about forcing developers to choose copyleft. And you ignored the stated legitimate reasons for choosing copyleft in most cases if you care about the society.
  - coldtea 1y ago
    Others having different ideas and opinions doesn't mean that those ideas and opinions are correct, or that they are beneficial. They might be detrimental to the FOSS movement or to society in general. So "to each their own" only goes so far. One can very well accept that other devs/teams have different ideas and opinions && that they can (by law) have such ideas and opinions, but also think that they have them for the wrong reasons, and that they shouldn't have them, and that we'd all be better off if they didn't.
  - goku12 1y ago
    > I think you're missing the point. > There are developers who prefer MIT not because they're a "big player" or "because truth make people uncomfortable", people simply have different preference for what the ideal license is for their project. Did you miss this part in my comment?: > There are legitimate uses for permissive licenses and I still use them for those. Or this part from GP's comment?: > being able to do this is the reason why companies have brainwashed the Internet into ... Or this part?: > ... choosing the MIT license for everything (emphasis mine) All of these imply that the companies did a mass campaign and not individual brainwashing. They also imply that the MIT license is not suitable for everything and by corollary that there are instances where they do apply. All of it are aimed at the companies that resorted to these underhanded tactics. Where does any of these imply that every single use of the MIT license is due to brainwashing? I can't understand how anyone concludes instead that it's all a personal attack on MIT license users (that includes me too). > If you cannot deal with that, that sounds like a you problem, but judging by your comments, you're not exactly gonna re-evaluate with a different perspective, since you seem unable to understand others have different ideas and opinions than you. Not only does one have to deal with people reinterpreting others' comments according to their convenience, they also have to withstand guilt tripping based on it. And the irony is that you cite my complaint about the same issue for it!
ahartmetz 1y ago
It's the tolerance against intolerance paradox, basically. The freedom to take away freedom. I'm leaning towards not giving that freedom, but it's complicated.
- sgc 1y ago
  I will say here something I have said and has proved unpopular before. The complexity is mainly something of scale. I would propose more permissive MIT style licensing for small companies, and something stricter for larger companies. It is hard to enforce (which was the main complaint I got), but it's not impossible and I think it is better than the current state of affairs.
  - walterbell 1y ago
    This may already exist in practice. Large companies will self-enforce, as they already do with GPL and "open" LLMs that are dual licensed by company size. Small companies don't care either way and are hard to enforce, so that works. Any pointers to open/closed vendors and projects which use this kind of honor system? EU CRA has "commercial use" definitions to differentiate OSS contributors and OSS consumers.
    - sgc 1y ago
      Not that I know of, but there are many subscription services that are based on institutional size / income, and they are more often than not self-certifying.
- graemep 1y ago
  A good example of that is Apple moving from bash to zsh, because bash moved to GPL 3 which prevents locking down devives. It was very specifically because they wanted the freedom to take away their users' freedom.
attila-lendvai 1y ago
ideally -- without a legal system using force to stop people using knowledge (IP laws), -- i would be on your position. in fact, i used to agree with you. but in the current reality around us, i believe it's a more nuanced issue.
MYEUHD 1y ago
If the Linux Kernel was licensed permissively, none of the phone manufacturers would've released the source code of their kernel trees. The GPL is the reason we have Android custom Roms today.
- berkes 1y ago
  That's entirely speculative. The speculation has merits and makes sense. But is speculative nontheless.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Easy see the upstream contributions from any commercial vendor that has integrated BSD into their UNIX flavours, or the alternatives that exist nowadays for embedded FOSS operating systems, none of them GPL.
    - kuschku 1y ago
      I can get the source of the kernel, including all drivers, running on my android phone with a few clicks and build a custom ROM. Where can I get the source of the exact kernel running on iOS devices, including all drivers? How about the Playstation 4 or 5? Where can I get the source of their FreeBSD fork?
      - fabrice_d 1y ago
        > I can get the source of the kernel, including all drivers, running on my android phone with a few clicks and build a custom ROM. No, most drivers are closed source and you can just extract binary blobs for them. They run as daemons that communicate through the binder ipc - Android basically turned the Linux kernel into a microkernel.
        pjmlp 1y ago
        Indeed, since Android 8 all drivers are in userspace and use Android IPC to talk to the Linux kernel. Traditional Linux drivers are considered legacy in Android. https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/hal https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/hal
F3nd0 1y ago
Then you care about a different kind of freedom than GPL proponents: licensing freedom, rather than user freedom, basically. There is no 'true freedom', as it comes down to the point of view; no licence will give you both at the same time.
- jajuuka 1y ago
  User freedom isn't really that though. It's corporate goodwill. If a company uses GPL code and doesn't release it what is the enforcement mechanism? A lengthy court proceeding that can go either way and will likely bankrupt the less wealthy party. Or if they are in another country they can tell you to piss off and you have no way of getting the code. We see this all the time with China. In essence, they are the same but one allows you ask nicely and hope that the corporation is feeling generous.
miroljub 1y ago
Agree 100%. I gave up on the GPL before I even knew what exactly it was about because of the zealotry of many of its proponents. I would even go as far as saying that without the FSF, GPL-like licenses would be much more common.
- beeflet 1y ago
  If I zealously advocated for you continue breathing, would you strangle yourself to spite me?
  - F3nd0 1y ago
    Any half-decent person is going to keep on breathing. It's one of the basic prerequisites of bringing some value to society. Not breathing is selfish and completely misses the point of life. If you're going to exist, then breathe; it's really as simple as that.
josephcsible 1y ago
> true freedom requires the freedom for others to make their own licensing choices You're mixing up freedom and power. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html for an explanation.
kelnos 1y ago
You may disagree with the overly-derogatory term "brainwash", but I think it is true that corporations have been spreading FUD around coopyleft licenses for a while now, and the balance has tilted toward permissive licenses for new projects.
cxr 1y ago
So what's your rationale for denying recipients true freedom and choosing to shackle them under the terms of the MIT License?
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  This is an example of a "When did you stop beating your wife" question. It assumes only "true freedom" can stem from a license other than the MIT one without any attempt to arrive at the conclusion that the MIT license doesn't reflect "true freedom."
  - cxr 1y ago
    No, it's not. How old are you?
samrus 1y ago
Like tolerance, he irony of freedom is that you cant give others the freedom to limit anyone elses freedom. Thats actually the way to maximize freedom

oliwarner 1y ago

Despite anyone's personal views, it's undeniable that corps favour a Free they can use as they wish. It's also fairly evident that they make this favour known through their culture. Brainwashing may be a bit far, but only just. All for naught, I fear, while LLMs consume all and regurgitate license-free to vibe-coders everywhere.

goku12 1y ago

> You are quite welcome to disagree with that stance, but please cut out the inflammatory language. It's not charitable towards others and it isn't healthy for good discussion. It is no more inflammatory than the coordinated war that was waged against copyleft licenses on tech fora and social media for more than a decade before hackers started to realize en masse that it was all a ploy to extract free labor from them. There are legitimate uses for permissive licenses and I still use them for those. But the big players certainly pushed them well beyond those cases where they made any sense. More than enough evidence has since emerged that prove this to be the case. It does no one any favors to deny the presence of bad actors and their malintent behind the utter mess we find ourselves in right now. I find it disturbing that whenever people express their frustration regarding this, there are attempts to shoot them down with accusations of inflammatory language, political correctness, etc. But the truth is that the big players have caused far far more damage than any inflammatory citicism they face for it now. What's actually unhealthy for good discussion is the dystopian censorship of criticisms because the truth make some people uncomfortable. Every bit of harsh criticism they receive here is something they willfully and rightfully earned.

embedding-shape 1y ago
> What's actually unhealthy for good discussion is the dystopian censorship of criticisms because the truth make some people uncomfortable I think you're missing the point. There are developers who prefer MIT not because they're a "big player" or "because truth make people uncomfortable", people simply have different preference for what the ideal license is for their project. If you cannot deal with that, that sounds like a you problem, but judging by your comments, you're not exactly gonna re-evaluate with a different perspective, since you seem unable to understand others have different ideas and opinions than you.
- fsflover 1y ago
  The parent did say > There are legitimate uses for permissive licenses and I still use them for those. The parent didn't talk about forcing developers to choose copyleft. And you ignored the stated legitimate reasons for choosing copyleft in most cases if you care about the society.
- coldtea 1y ago
  Others having different ideas and opinions doesn't mean that those ideas and opinions are correct, or that they are beneficial. They might be detrimental to the FOSS movement or to society in general. So "to each their own" only goes so far. One can very well accept that other devs/teams have different ideas and opinions && that they can (by law) have such ideas and opinions, but also think that they have them for the wrong reasons, and that they shouldn't have them, and that we'd all be better off if they didn't.
- goku12 1y ago
  > I think you're missing the point. > There are developers who prefer MIT not because they're a "big player" or "because truth make people uncomfortable", people simply have different preference for what the ideal license is for their project. Did you miss this part in my comment?: > There are legitimate uses for permissive licenses and I still use them for those. Or this part from GP's comment?: > being able to do this is the reason why companies have brainwashed the Internet into ... Or this part?: > ... choosing the MIT license for everything (emphasis mine) All of these imply that the companies did a mass campaign and not individual brainwashing. They also imply that the MIT license is not suitable for everything and by corollary that there are instances where they do apply. All of it are aimed at the companies that resorted to these underhanded tactics. Where does any of these imply that every single use of the MIT license is due to brainwashing? I can't understand how anyone concludes instead that it's all a personal attack on MIT license users (that includes me too). > If you cannot deal with that, that sounds like a you problem, but judging by your comments, you're not exactly gonna re-evaluate with a different perspective, since you seem unable to understand others have different ideas and opinions than you. Not only does one have to deal with people reinterpreting others' comments according to their convenience, they also have to withstand guilt tripping based on it. And the irony is that you cite my complaint about the same issue for it!

ahartmetz 1y ago

It's the tolerance against intolerance paradox, basically. The freedom to take away freedom. I'm leaning towards not giving that freedom, but it's complicated.

sgc 1y ago
I will say here something I have said and has proved unpopular before. The complexity is mainly something of scale. I would propose more permissive MIT style licensing for small companies, and something stricter for larger companies. It is hard to enforce (which was the main complaint I got), but it's not impossible and I think it is better than the current state of affairs.
- walterbell 1y ago
  This may already exist in practice. Large companies will self-enforce, as they already do with GPL and "open" LLMs that are dual licensed by company size. Small companies don't care either way and are hard to enforce, so that works. Any pointers to open/closed vendors and projects which use this kind of honor system? EU CRA has "commercial use" definitions to differentiate OSS contributors and OSS consumers.
  - sgc 1y ago
    Not that I know of, but there are many subscription services that are based on institutional size / income, and they are more often than not self-certifying.
graemep 1y ago
A good example of that is Apple moving from bash to zsh, because bash moved to GPL 3 which prevents locking down devives. It was very specifically because they wanted the freedom to take away their users' freedom.

attila-lendvai 1y ago

ideally -- without a legal system using force to stop people using knowledge (IP laws), -- i would be on your position. in fact, i used to agree with you. but in the current reality around us, i believe it's a more nuanced issue.

MYEUHD 1y ago

If the Linux Kernel was licensed permissively, none of the phone manufacturers would've released the source code of their kernel trees. The GPL is the reason we have Android custom Roms today.

berkes 1y ago
That's entirely speculative. The speculation has merits and makes sense. But is speculative nontheless.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Easy see the upstream contributions from any commercial vendor that has integrated BSD into their UNIX flavours, or the alternatives that exist nowadays for embedded FOSS operating systems, none of them GPL.
  - kuschku 1y ago
    I can get the source of the kernel, including all drivers, running on my android phone with a few clicks and build a custom ROM. Where can I get the source of the exact kernel running on iOS devices, including all drivers? How about the Playstation 4 or 5? Where can I get the source of their FreeBSD fork?
    - fabrice_d 1y ago
      > I can get the source of the kernel, including all drivers, running on my android phone with a few clicks and build a custom ROM. No, most drivers are closed source and you can just extract binary blobs for them. They run as daemons that communicate through the binder ipc - Android basically turned the Linux kernel into a microkernel.
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        Indeed, since Android 8 all drivers are in userspace and use Android IPC to talk to the Linux kernel. Traditional Linux drivers are considered legacy in Android. https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/hal https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/hal

F3nd0 1y ago

Then you care about a different kind of freedom than GPL proponents: licensing freedom, rather than user freedom, basically. There is no 'true freedom', as it comes down to the point of view; no licence will give you both at the same time.

jajuuka 1y ago
User freedom isn't really that though. It's corporate goodwill. If a company uses GPL code and doesn't release it what is the enforcement mechanism? A lengthy court proceeding that can go either way and will likely bankrupt the less wealthy party. Or if they are in another country they can tell you to piss off and you have no way of getting the code. We see this all the time with China. In essence, they are the same but one allows you ask nicely and hope that the corporation is feeling generous.

miroljub 1y ago

Agree 100%. I gave up on the GPL before I even knew what exactly it was about because of the zealotry of many of its proponents. I would even go as far as saying that without the FSF, GPL-like licenses would be much more common.

beeflet 1y ago
If I zealously advocated for you continue breathing, would you strangle yourself to spite me?
- F3nd0 1y ago
  Any half-decent person is going to keep on breathing. It's one of the basic prerequisites of bringing some value to society. Not breathing is selfish and completely misses the point of life. If you're going to exist, then breathe; it's really as simple as that.

josephcsible 1y ago

> true freedom requires the freedom for others to make their own licensing choices You're mixing up freedom and power. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html for an explanation.

kelnos 1y ago

You may disagree with the overly-derogatory term "brainwash", but I think it is true that corporations have been spreading FUD around coopyleft licenses for a while now, and the balance has tilted toward permissive licenses for new projects.

cxr 1y ago

So what's your rationale for denying recipients true freedom and choosing to shackle them under the terms of the MIT License?

shadowgovt 1y ago
This is an example of a "When did you stop beating your wife" question. It assumes only "true freedom" can stem from a license other than the MIT one without any attempt to arrive at the conclusion that the MIT license doesn't reflect "true freedom."
- cxr 1y ago
  No, it's not. How old are you?

samrus 1y ago

Like tolerance, he irony of freedom is that you cant give others the freedom to limit anyone elses freedom. Thats actually the way to maximize freedom