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I'm confused. You begin your post with a stance that's typical of copyleft proponents, then you end it in the opposite direction. There is a trait in human nat
by teo_zero 2mo ago
I'm confused. You begin your post with a stance that's typical of copyleft proponents, then you end it in the opposite direction.
There is a trait in human nature that pushes us to share our knowledge. But we would like this sharing to be mutual.
When I publish a piece of software for free, I would like others to read it, comment it, give me suggestions on how to make it better, and the whole community can benefit from the process.
Unfortunately, someone might instead take it, start making profit out of it, and never giving anything back to me or the community.
As a device to get the former effect and avoid the latter, a sort of "contract" was created that mimicks a copyright licence. It is called copyleft and says that you can do whatever you want with my work except profit.
Now, someone might say that stopping a third party from profiting out of something they have not made is correct, someone might say it nevertheless means removing a freedom from them.
Whose side are you on?
- naikrovek 2mo agowe all would like people to share their code with us, but forcing them to because of your license is extremely anti-freedom to me. address this culturally, that is the only way to address this completely. legal means cannot fundamentally redirect the culture of a society and make them believe that sharing is better for everyone. if you want a society that shares what it creates, then help create THAT. forcing people to do it pushes them in the opposite direction, they want to grasp their things even tighter than before.
- teo_zero 2mo agoAbsolutely. That's how coding used to work in the 70s. Then software passed from people to companies, which proved alien to the cultural values that had hold so far. At the end of the 80s Stallman designed something to address the corporate world with a language they would understand. They had copyright, he created copyleft. Now, please reread your post replacing "people" with "corporations" and check if it still sounds reasonable.
- andyroid 2mo ago“we all would like corporations to share their products with us, but forcing us to pay because of their proprietary license is extremely anti-freedom to me” No one is forcing you to do anything, and least of all which software licenses to depend on. If you don’t like something, choose something else. Freedom, you know?
- ValdikSS 2mo ago>Unfortunately, someone might instead take it, start making profit out of it, and never giving anything back to me or the community. >you can do whatever you want with my work except profit. GPL doesn't prohibit that. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html > If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license.
- teo_zero 2mo agoTechnically true. Practically, to make a substantial profit, what you sell must be more worthy than something you can also download for free. So you must sell an enhanced version of the original software. And that is what the GPL wants you to give back and not keep for yourself.
- ValdikSS 2mo agoI sell free software of others as an appliance, as a hardware device. Nobody of original authors complained so far, quite the contrary. I don't get it when the software author choses the license they don't see suitable in full, only because it's one of a common FOSS licenses, and than wiggle around it. There's nothing wrong with making open-source with exception, or dual licenses, or non-free software.