4 ms·

It may be better for commercial users, because they don't have to give back their improvements, but it's worse for the project itself for the same reason.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> It may be better for commercial users, because they don't have to give back their improvements, but it's worse for the project itself for the same reason. OTOH, another perspective is that the GPL is worse for the projects because the restrictions it imposes may make people less likely to touch it at all, and those who don't touch it aren't going to give anything back whether they have to or not, and commercial users demonstrably do give back to projects that are under licenses that don't require them to do so -- and even pay people to work directly on the projects.
- chii 13y ago
  but having commercial users "altruistically" contribute back means having to trust in them. Had lightable not been GPL, commercial entities could easily have just taken it, make a nice derivative (e.g., make it into a game dev IDE), but never contribute that back at all. TLDR; they got a free lunch. With GPL , said commercial entity either have to provide their derivative's source (thus contributing back via more features/code), or pay the owners of lighttable a fee for not revealing the sources. Neither way allows them to get a free lunch. This is a good thing imho.
asdasf 13y ago
That isn't actually the case, just the rational used to make the choice. Actual experience has shown that commercial users simply avoid restrictive licensed projects, and frequently give back contributions to liberally licensed projects. Ogre3d for example switched from LGPL to MIT and got more contributions from the commercial software world.
- mateuszf 13y ago
  Maybe, but the counterpoint would be that you don't necessarily know about companies using MIT projects and similar because they don't have to announce it at all.
  - asdasf 13y ago
    That is not a counterpoint, it is an assumption. A counterpoint would be actual experience of getting less contributions with an MIT/BSD/ISC project. Saying "but in my imagination it doesn't work that way!" does not counter actual real world experience.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> It may be better for commercial users, because they don't have to give back their improvements, but it's worse for the project itself for the same reason. OTOH, another perspective is that the GPL is worse for the projects because the restrictions it imposes may make people less likely to touch it at all, and those who don't touch it aren't going to give anything back whether they have to or not, and commercial users demonstrably do give back to projects that are under licenses that don't require them to do so -- and even pay people to work directly on the projects.

chii 13y ago
but having commercial users "altruistically" contribute back means having to trust in them. Had lightable not been GPL, commercial entities could easily have just taken it, make a nice derivative (e.g., make it into a game dev IDE), but never contribute that back at all. TLDR; they got a free lunch. With GPL , said commercial entity either have to provide their derivative's source (thus contributing back via more features/code), or pay the owners of lighttable a fee for not revealing the sources. Neither way allows them to get a free lunch. This is a good thing imho.

asdasf 13y ago

That isn't actually the case, just the rational used to make the choice. Actual experience has shown that commercial users simply avoid restrictive licensed projects, and frequently give back contributions to liberally licensed projects. Ogre3d for example switched from LGPL to MIT and got more contributions from the commercial software world.

mateuszf 13y ago
Maybe, but the counterpoint would be that you don't necessarily know about companies using MIT projects and similar because they don't have to announce it at all.
- asdasf 13y ago
  That is not a counterpoint, it is an assumption. A counterpoint would be actual experience of getting less contributions with an MIT/BSD/ISC project. Saying "but in my imagination it doesn't work that way!" does not counter actual real world experience.