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> We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply an
by ricardobeat 1mo ago
> We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires.
As a long-time developer and consumer of OSS I have to disagree. Open-source software has had an enormous effect on the world, and that... was kind of the point? When we licensed things as MIT we knew that corporations would use it. We wanted them to use them, adopt them and bring new users into the community. You take some, you give back. There was no expectation of turning your late-afternoons JS framework into a business. And not having access to it would absolutely not have stopped corporate behemoths from getting where they are, but would have killed many small businesses and startups.
That said, I've started licensing some of my code with the BUSL license [1] - unrestricted use, unless you are a large company. The code becomes MIT-licensed automatically after a set window to remove maintainability concerns.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License
- LtWorf 1mo agoBut why should I work for free so that companies can fire my fellow human beings?
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- brainwad 1mo agoThe causality is wrong here. You chose to work for free with no reward, and _then_ companies found your work and used it. Presumably you started out working for free because it was intrinsically rewarding (otherwise: stop doing work you hate for free?).
- LtWorf 1mo agoI chose to do it for free to help other people. And picking a MIT license does the opposite.
- brainwad 1mo agoWhy? MIT license or public domain helps the most people, because anyone can use it. It being usable by corporations is purely additive, it can't subtract from the number of people you'd help with a copyleft license.
- LtWorf 1mo agoPutting people out of jobs doesn't necessarily help them?
- knorker 1mo agoHuh? You release code so that people will have to rewrite it? I really don't understand what your goal would be in releasing code at all, then.
- LtWorf 1mo agoDid you read my comment or you just reply for the sake of it? I release the code so that people and companies that feel like contributing to the community can use it. Companies that want to take without giving back however are mildly inconvenienced by copyleft.
- ghaff 1mo agoHow? If they don't make (and distribute) changes.
- LtWorf 1mo agoBecause they cannot distribute the software itself or use it for online services with AGPL
- ghaff 1mo agoDistributing (however defined by a given license) unmodified software that is presumably widely available to customers may be a requirement but is also a profoundly uninteresting legal requirement.
- zelphirkalt 1mo agoThe complaint here is, that those business are not necessarily "bringing people into the community", unless you are talking about passive users, who do not contribute. The businesses simply use the stuff built at no cost to rake in big money, while the person, who did the actual work does not see a cent. This is different with copyleft licenses like AGPL. Only that many businesses are so afraid of contributing anything at all, that they often don't want to use AGPL or even GPL licensed software.