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In particular, if you license it MIT, and it's useful, expect Amazon to make a fork, not give you the source code, and each tens of millions of dollars from it
by pocksuppet 8mo ago
In particular, if you license it MIT, and it's useful, expect Amazon to make a fork, not give you the source code, and each tens of millions of dollars from it while you don't get a cent.
There's writing code for charity, and then there's this. Charity wasn't meant to include hyper-corporations.
- Andrex 8mo agoMaybe Stallman had something of a point...
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo agoStallman is always right, and HN always downvotes it.
- littlestymaar 8mo agoPublicly defending pedophilia arguably isn't “right”, but if you restrict Stallman's positions to software licensing, then I'd agree with you.
- ux266478 8mo agoThe only instance in which he's ever engaged in "publicly defending pedophilia" was in remarks he made 20 years ago about the innocuity of "voluntary" sex with minors. He has since retracted those statements and publicly espoused a different and more informed opinion. There's certainly a large amount of very low-quality journalism engaging in bad-faith interpretations of things he's said in other contexts, though these aren't serious characterizations, only hallucinations manufactured by professional scheisters to fulfill unspoken agendas. At this point dredging it up and holding it against him in-perpetuity is a bit wrongheaded.
- graemep 8mo agoOf course restrict it to his opinions on software licensing. I think that is the sort of thing people mean when they say he was right. Lots of people made similar claims. Most notably The National Council for Civil Liberties (now called Liberty), the UK's leading civil/human rights organisation made submissions to parliament claiming that sex with minors was not always harmful, had a pro-paedo organisation as an affiliate and give them a representative on the gay rights subcommittee: https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/uk-travel/scotland-travel/the-final-cut-paedophile-information-exchange-gns6d5jt9vt https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/uk-travel/scotl... The people involved were unaffected, some reaching fairly high political permissions. A lot of other people whose works are respected have actually had sex with minors. Eric Gill and Oscar Wilde for example. None of that makes Stallman's opinions defensible in my opinion. On the other hand I am happy to ignore his opinions on that topic and still value his opinions on other things.
- ux266478 8mo agoThe entire point is of my post is that it's no longer his opinion. > Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. https://stallman.org/archives/2019-sep-dec.html#14_September_2019_(Sex_between_an_adult_and_a_child_is_wrong) https://stallman.org/archives/2019-sep-dec.html#14_September...
- graemep 8mo agoBoth your point and my point are true. Obviously I am glad he has abandoned his opinions. I do think it is terrible that the politicians, activists, teachers etc. who held such opinions in the past did not suffer severe career consequences even if they subsequently changed their opinions. I think they cannot be trusted in those areas. However, Stallman is not in such an area.
- peaseagee 8mo agoTell that to my spouse who, at age 14, was given his contact card by him directly.
- corndoge 8mo agoWow, I'd be thrilled if I met stallman and got his contact card at age 14!
- dTal 8mo agoI'm not following - are you implying that handing a contact card to someone is a sexual pass? Or is it only considered sexual when the recipient is underage?
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo agoI wish at 14 I had people of such integrity around me.
- tredre3 8mo agoHe was wrong about refusing to make gcc more modular by fear that it would be used to insert proprietary plugins, which is why llvm is behind every new language or dev tool now and gcc is only relevant because the kernel still depends on it (for now). His opinions on software have been largely out of touch for the past 20 years. People might yearn for his ideals, but it's just not the world we live in.
- littlestymaar 8mo ago> His opinions on software have been largely out of touch for the past 20 years I said “software licensing”, you're talking about “software”.
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo agoI keep hearing this. Please quote Stallman's quote where he defends pedophilia. Not a quote of someone else saying that Stallman defends pedofilhia, but a quote by Stallman himself.
- 0_____0 8mo agoHe's a terrible communicator, and sort of repellent in person. Contrast someone like Cory Doctorow who manages to be right about stuff and actually communicate effectively.
- shevy-java 8mo agoI don't really share that point. If the message is correct, why would the other things matter? Due to "social norms"? It is a similar problem with Code of Conducts. In general I don't care about CoCs. That does not mean I act in the opposite manner either - I just don't feel the need for CoCs.
- _aavaa_ 8mo ago> why would the other things matter Because on the other end of the argument is an audience of human beings, not a theorem solver. Pretending that delivery does NOT matter, or even shouldn't matter, is out of touch with reality.
- andrew_lettuce 8mo agobecause brilliant jerk is not acceptable
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8mo agoNope. Stallman helped create this mess. Free software underpins all the infrastructure of surveillance capitalism.
- Andrex 8mo agoIt underpins all software, and has wormed its way into Windows. I'm not sure this is as good a point as you think.
- atls 8mo agoAGPLv3 attempts to solve this problem, by forcing SaaS providers to open-source their modifications. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html
- j1elo 8mo agoDepends on the needs of the licensor. AGPLv3 solves the problem of other players taking the code, improving it privately, and not sharing those improvements. But AGPLv3 is not a silver bullet for people who write Open Source code and pretend to make a living from it. "Open Source is not a business plan". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45095581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45095581
- gowld 8mo agoSo? I am not about to create AWS. I'm glad people can use my free software on their own machines, on rented servers, or hosted by an expert.
- alpaca128 8mo agoAWS can profit more from it than smaller organizations or individuals, making it even more untouchable by potential competition. A market with little competition costs you too in the long term.
- Ma8ee 8mo agoAre you still glad when AWS starts selling you software as a service and make hundreds of millions and you get nothing?
- gowld 7mo agoOf course, because I get the software as a service that I paid for. If I wasn't glad, I wouldn't buy it.,
- Ma8ee 7mo agoMy meaning clearly got lost when I droppen an r. Will you still be happy when they sell youR software, that is, the software you wrote, and make a lot of money while you get nothing.
- mkehrt 8mo agoI don't understand your point? If you write code with an MIT license, this is what you would expect.
- shevy-java 8mo agoTotally agreed. I find it strange that people use the MIT licence and then complain "big greedy corporation did not contribute back anything". Though I also agree that this leeching approach by corporations is a problem to the ecosystem. MIT just is not the right licence to fight that.
- pocksuppet 8mo agoPeople are conditioned not to think about it.
- nananana9 8mo agoIf you want evil megacorps to give you money when they use your thing, maybe say "if you're an evil megacorp you have to give me money when you use my thing" in the license? If your license reads "hey, you can use this however you want, no matter who you are, and don't have to give me money", people will use it however they want, no matter who they are, and won't give you money. Unfortunately, for decades, free software fanatics have bullied inexperienced and eager programmers, who don't know any better into believing that an actual sustainable development model that respects their work is evil and that we should all work for free and beg for donations.
- shevy-java 8mo agoI agree that MIT may not be the best licence here in such a use case scenario. The question is why corporations think they can be leeches though - and the bigger, the more of a leech they are on the ecosystem. That's just not right.
- jonathanstrange 8mo agoIMHO, this is the wrong way of looking at it. You can choose any license you like. Choose the right license, and that should be the end of the discussion.
- graemep 8mo ago> The question is why corporations think they can be leeches though because they can be. They do not think they can be leeches, they know they can be leeches. > That's just not right I somewhat agree with you, but they do actually have permission to do it.
- buran77 8mo ago> The question is why corporations think they can be leeches though Because they can, they don't just think they do. Everything about the framework they operate in allows or even encourages them to do it. > That's just not right. As a matter of morality, you're right. This is something very few people or corporations concern themselves with just as soon as there's real money to be made by not concerning themselves with this.
- frizlab 8mo agoAnd whatever license you use, expect it to be crawled by AI, and have AI provider make millions on it.
- smegger001 8mo ago> if you license it MIT, and it's useful, expect Amazon to make a fork, not give you the source code, thats why the gpl family of license exist. MIT/BSD family licenses are do whatever you want with this, if you want to make money off of you pet opensource project I recommend multi-license it with a copyleft with copyright assignment required for contributions and offer other licenses with a fee.