3 ms·

> user freedom. He was an academic. Did he anticipate user demand, market forces or that a corporation (Google, Microsoft, Hashcorp) could drive a permissive

by anon3_ 11y ago

> user freedom. He was an academic. Did he anticipate user demand, market forces or that a corporation (Google, Microsoft, Hashcorp) could drive a permissive licensed open source project in the open? It turns out the Firefox and Chromium, both liberally licensed projects, usurped Internet Explorer's monopoly on browsers. Both ultimately are backed financially by corporations with huge troths of patents and proprietary code.

icebraining 11y ago
Chromium certainly didn't usurp anything. Chrome, the proprietary browser, did. As for Firefox, the Mozilla Public License is actually a (weak) copyleft license, since if you modify any file, you must distribute your changes - it's closer to the LGPL than to MIT/BSD. And the other licenses under which Firefox is distributed (it's tri-licensed) are GPL and LGPL.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Yes, the MPL is like a non-viral copyleft. It lets you keep user freedom mostly intact without being unable to link to code under certain licenses.
- anon3_ 11y ago
  Exactly, this supports my view. Chromium is permissively licensed, and Chrome integrates proprietary components. Strengthening the product with features and giving it marketing. I see the point on MPL. As for bundling more restrictive licenses - as a developer - you have to judge by the most permissive to see how free it really is.
- comex 11y ago
  You're nitpicking. Chrome has always been very close to Chromium. Even if some crap like the recent voice activation thing, DRM, and in the past the PDF reader (but that was open sourced) has remained proprietary, the vast majority of the code is permissively licensed and open to external contributions.
dalke 11y ago
There's no need to anticipate something that already existed. Permissive licensed user-developed projects existed a few decades before Stallman's involvement. Quoting from the Wikipedia page on SHARE at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_%28computing%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_%28computing%29 : > SHARE Inc. is a volunteer-run user group for IBM mainframe computers that was founded in 1955 by Los Angeles-area users of the IBM 701 computer system. ... A major resource of SHARE from the beginning was the SHARE library. Originally, IBM distributed its operating systems in source form[1][2][3] and systems programmers commonly made small local additions or modifications and exchanged them with other users. The SHARE library and the process of distributed development it fostered was one of the major origins of open source software.

by anon3_ 11y ago

icebraining 11y ago

Chromium certainly didn't usurp anything. Chrome, the proprietary browser, did. As for Firefox, the Mozilla Public License is actually a (weak) copyleft license, since if you modify any file, you must distribute your changes - it's closer to the LGPL than to MIT/BSD. And the other licenses under which Firefox is distributed (it's tri-licensed) are GPL and LGPL.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Yes, the MPL is like a non-viral copyleft. It lets you keep user freedom mostly intact without being unable to link to code under certain licenses.
anon3_ 11y ago
Exactly, this supports my view. Chromium is permissively licensed, and Chrome integrates proprietary components. Strengthening the product with features and giving it marketing. I see the point on MPL. As for bundling more restrictive licenses - as a developer - you have to judge by the most permissive to see how free it really is.
comex 11y ago
You're nitpicking. Chrome has always been very close to Chromium. Even if some crap like the recent voice activation thing, DRM, and in the past the PDF reader (but that was open sourced) has remained proprietary, the vast majority of the code is permissively licensed and open to external contributions.

dalke 11y ago

There's no need to anticipate something that already existed. Permissive licensed user-developed projects existed a few decades before Stallman's involvement. Quoting from the Wikipedia page on SHARE at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_%28computing%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_%28computing%29 : > SHARE Inc. is a volunteer-run user group for IBM mainframe computers that was founded in 1955 by Los Angeles-area users of the IBM 701 computer system. ... A major resource of SHARE from the beginning was the SHARE library. Originally, IBM distributed its operating systems in source form[1][2][3] and systems programmers commonly made small local additions or modifications and exchanged them with other users. The SHARE library and the process of distributed development it fostered was one of the major origins of open source software.