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For FOSS I personally prefer Apache 2.0 license, as 10 years from now I have no idea what people will need for their projects. Personally, it makes me happy if

For FOSS I personally prefer Apache 2.0 license, as 10 years from now I have no idea what people will need for their projects. Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work. Just don't redirect commercial support tickets onto community projects, or get neglected customers to contact authors. The way I see it... is symbiotic commercial relationships are important, as people can get their time sponsored to work on FOSS code. Also, having community projects form reliable long term infrastructure opens additional opportunity for people to work with FOSS options. Telling people how they should have fun is always lame... whether it is Sony/Microsoft... or just some disillusioned dude convinced their work won't be obfuscated by an LLM in 30 seconds. =3

ricardobeat 1mo ago
This, for some reason, has become a controversial idea — as evidenced by your comment being downvoted. I don’t understand what angle people are coming from, when they disregard the community effects of open-source software entirely. If your main goal is to make money, there is absolutely nothing wrong with building a business instead.
- Joel_Mckay 1mo ago
  If people have a rational self-interest in helping build great works, than the projects simply manifest out of necessity. There is zero benefit in assuming everything is a zero-sum game. With billions of people online someone is always having the best or worst day of their lives. I rather people be honest about what they think, and trust respectful disagreement is welcome. Have a great day =3
broodbucket 1mo ago
>Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work Copyleft doesn't say that they can't, it says they have to make their changes available
- Joel_Mckay 1mo ago
  I am mostly just an anti-contaminating license proponent. Porting to multiple platforms gets complicated if you include a 3rd party commercial library with a project that on linking demands it also become publicly accessible. For example, if someone wants to do something creative... they shouldn't have to cite 400 different peoples licenses. That isn't sustainable or fun. I will stick with Apache 2.0, but understand different folks have other use-cases =3
  - pocksuppet 1mo ago
    That is why the FSF invented just one GPL, and said everyone should use this one or later. Then when they invented another one, it was automatically compatible. This way, the license is compatible, and you don't have to give up any freedoms.
    - Joel_Mckay 1mo ago
      GPL and LGPL works for a lot of people, but becomes a persistent issue when porting to other OS. They both still become a contaminating license if you have to static link something, embed 3rd party blobs, or even use icons for a consistent user interface experience. Having a less restrictive FOSS compatible license that doesn't obligate people to modify the general purpose libraries for their edge case has proven important. GPL only truly makes sense if targeting an OS supporting shared-object library paradigms. This is part of the reason why 95% of commercial Applications are running in an emulated/wrapper on the nix platforms. The year of the Linux Desktop is still a ways off, and the foundational library structures are under constant upgrade or permutation. Snap/Flatpak/AppImage and Docker/RancherVM were all designed to try and mitigate the compatibility chaos of perpetual nix Beta release cultures. It has some advantages, but also a lot of disadvantages similar to the Butterfly Effect bugs when something with the same name slightly changes behavior. =3
      - cindyllm 1mo ago
        [dead]
zelphirkalt 1mo ago
I think people getting time sponsored working on FOSS is quite rare. Would like to do that myself, but instead I just develop in my free time.
- Joel_Mckay 1mo ago
  You mean you have never written or used FOSS applications at work? I find that very surprising, but I have seen some shops practice clean room coding policies. =3
  - cindyllm 1mo ago
    [dead]
  - zelphirkalt 1mo ago
    Yes, that's what I mean. I have used open source software before, and deployed it and so on, but no one has ever offered me to work 1 day a week or something like that during my job hours on an open source project, contributing something. Maybe at a future job.
xorcist 1mo ago
> it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work It's an idea as old as any: The freedom to restrict the freedom of others, is it really a freedom? It is a tiresome debate. People can argue about it until the sun sets without reaching an agreement. Better to be clear about which kind of freedom you mean, and respect the choice of others. Plenty of businesses have been started around free software without necessarily restricting the freedoms of others. It is often argued that this constitutes a better approximation of a truly free market than the entry barriers intellectual property law can put up.
- Joel_Mckay 1mo ago
  Philosophically, I see it as forced charity is no longer a true charity paradox. Or, a copyright troll is functionally indifferent from a copyleft troll. It is important to keep the path clear for kids to build their own success stories. =3
  - Brian_K_White 1mo ago
    Philosophically I see it as forced don't-murder is no longer true don't-murder. Why does it have to be forced? Why can't murder just be legal and if you want to murder that's fine and if you don't, that's fine too... It was not forced charity from the original author. They were free to choose any license. The original author is the only one in the position to choose to be charitable or not. No one else's opinion on charity matters. Rather being thoughtful and principled enough to choose a copyleft license is the truest charity of all and the most valuable for all other consumers forever after. It's forced on everyone else after that, but I see no problem with that because remind me again just what exactly is the terrible burden being forced again? If I get something from you and the only terms are not money but simply attribute and share-alike, that is not some burden. That's like saying the only terms are you can have this for free and you can use it for any purpose you want, but just promise not to punch me in the face. "What? Outrageous! It's totally unreasonable to make it a condition enforced by law that I can't punch you in the face and still take your stuff."
    - 1mo ago

ricardobeat 1mo ago

This, for some reason, has become a controversial idea — as evidenced by your comment being downvoted. I don’t understand what angle people are coming from, when they disregard the community effects of open-source software entirely. If your main goal is to make money, there is absolutely nothing wrong with building a business instead.

Joel_Mckay 1mo ago
If people have a rational self-interest in helping build great works, than the projects simply manifest out of necessity. There is zero benefit in assuming everything is a zero-sum game. With billions of people online someone is always having the best or worst day of their lives. I rather people be honest about what they think, and trust respectful disagreement is welcome. Have a great day =3

broodbucket 1mo ago

>Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work Copyleft doesn't say that they can't, it says they have to make their changes available

Joel_Mckay 1mo ago
I am mostly just an anti-contaminating license proponent. Porting to multiple platforms gets complicated if you include a 3rd party commercial library with a project that on linking demands it also become publicly accessible. For example, if someone wants to do something creative... they shouldn't have to cite 400 different peoples licenses. That isn't sustainable or fun. I will stick with Apache 2.0, but understand different folks have other use-cases =3
- pocksuppet 1mo ago
  That is why the FSF invented just one GPL, and said everyone should use this one or later. Then when they invented another one, it was automatically compatible. This way, the license is compatible, and you don't have to give up any freedoms.
  - Joel_Mckay 1mo ago
    GPL and LGPL works for a lot of people, but becomes a persistent issue when porting to other OS. They both still become a contaminating license if you have to static link something, embed 3rd party blobs, or even use icons for a consistent user interface experience. Having a less restrictive FOSS compatible license that doesn't obligate people to modify the general purpose libraries for their edge case has proven important. GPL only truly makes sense if targeting an OS supporting shared-object library paradigms. This is part of the reason why 95% of commercial Applications are running in an emulated/wrapper on the nix platforms. The year of the Linux Desktop is still a ways off, and the foundational library structures are under constant upgrade or permutation. Snap/Flatpak/AppImage and Docker/RancherVM were all designed to try and mitigate the compatibility chaos of perpetual nix Beta release cultures. It has some advantages, but also a lot of disadvantages similar to the Butterfly Effect bugs when something with the same name slightly changes behavior. =3
    - cindyllm 1mo ago
      [dead]

zelphirkalt 1mo ago

I think people getting time sponsored working on FOSS is quite rare. Would like to do that myself, but instead I just develop in my free time.

Joel_Mckay 1mo ago
You mean you have never written or used FOSS applications at work? I find that very surprising, but I have seen some shops practice clean room coding policies. =3
- cindyllm 1mo ago
  [dead]
- zelphirkalt 1mo ago
  Yes, that's what I mean. I have used open source software before, and deployed it and so on, but no one has ever offered me to work 1 day a week or something like that during my job hours on an open source project, contributing something. Maybe at a future job.

xorcist 1mo ago

> it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work It's an idea as old as any: The freedom to restrict the freedom of others, is it really a freedom? It is a tiresome debate. People can argue about it until the sun sets without reaching an agreement. Better to be clear about which kind of freedom you mean, and respect the choice of others. Plenty of businesses have been started around free software without necessarily restricting the freedoms of others. It is often argued that this constitutes a better approximation of a truly free market than the entry barriers intellectual property law can put up.

Joel_Mckay 1mo ago
Philosophically, I see it as forced charity is no longer a true charity paradox. Or, a copyright troll is functionally indifferent from a copyleft troll. It is important to keep the path clear for kids to build their own success stories. =3
- Brian_K_White 1mo ago
  Philosophically I see it as forced don't-murder is no longer true don't-murder. Why does it have to be forced? Why can't murder just be legal and if you want to murder that's fine and if you don't, that's fine too... It was not forced charity from the original author. They were free to choose any license. The original author is the only one in the position to choose to be charitable or not. No one else's opinion on charity matters. Rather being thoughtful and principled enough to choose a copyleft license is the truest charity of all and the most valuable for all other consumers forever after. It's forced on everyone else after that, but I see no problem with that because remind me again just what exactly is the terrible burden being forced again? If I get something from you and the only terms are not money but simply attribute and share-alike, that is not some burden. That's like saying the only terms are you can have this for free and you can use it for any purpose you want, but just promise not to punch me in the face. "What? Outrageous! It's totally unreasonable to make it a condition enforced by law that I can't punch you in the face and still take your stuff."
  - 1mo ago