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An MIT licensed piece of software can be taken by a company, improved in-house and distributed as proprietary, thereby depleting the community of improvements t

An MIT licensed piece of software can be taken by a company, improved in-house and distributed as proprietary, thereby depleting the community of improvements to the work they have made freely available under good faith. However, this hypothetical ignores the reality that companies will often simply not touch GPL code rather than deal with compliance. It's not a choice between the MIT licensed code and the GPL licensed code, it's a choice between the MIT licensed code or anything else. Including reinventing that particular wheel in house. (opinion follows) In other words, the GPL reduces the amount of quality (software) in the world and ties developers' hands for the purposes of an ill-thought-out political goal. More annoyingly, it does so in the guise of user freedom, when in reality, the GPL does almost nothing for people who don't hack on code.

mordocai 11y ago
See Linux as a counter-point to this argument. If your software is good enough, has enough grass-roots support from developers, and has a good/large community around it then companies will bit the bullet and use it despite it being GPL.
- Aldo_MX 11y ago
  The kernel? Because I've yet to see a Linux distro that doesn't work better with non-GPL parts (ex. Proprietary Drivers).
  - mordocai 11y ago
    Only for hardware. Typically for wireless and video drivers. If you use an Intel video card and Intel wireless (the former of which you can only do if you don't care for intensive 3D apps) then you can get away with no OS level proprietary software. Pretty easy to do if your only use of the machine is development work. Once you get into gaming you have to pile a ton of proprietary software (OS and otherwise) if you want to play anything recent.
- baddox 11y ago
  An example of a GPL project that companies do touch is not a counterpoint to the argument that lots of companies refuse to touch lots of GPL code.
  - pessimizer 11y ago
    An example of a GPL project that most companies do touch is a counterpoint to the argument that the GPL prevents companies from using software. That lots of companies refuse to touch GPL code is not an argument for the proposition that "the GPL reduces the amount of quality (software) in the world."
rdtsc 11y ago
> However, this hypothetical ignores the reality that companies will often simply not touch GPL code rather than deal with compliances Some companies do they get a proprietary license from the authors in return for payment. I've seen companies pay for that. So answer doesn't necessarily have to be "we have to release all our code" it could also be the common business answer of -- pay and get a license.
minot 11y ago
> In other words, the GPL reduces the amount of quality (software) in the world and ties developers' hands for the purposes of an ill-thought-out political goal. I believe this is a plus point of GPLv3 (although more of a side-effect than a goal). I cheer for companies like Artifex which develops Ghostscript. It makes sense to me that if you're not willing to pay forward, you must pay back towards the cost of developing software. But then, I've never had to make these hard choices so my naivety shows here.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
the GPL does almost nothing for people who don't hack on code Yes, it does. Because of copyleft reciprocity, all users benefit from modified and enhanced copies to the software.
- kstenerud 11y ago
  Except for the loss in innovation due to companies that will not touch GPL for fear of being forced to divulge the trade secrets in their code. If a company could be sure that nothing in their code could jeopardize their competitive advantage, there'd be no problem with exposing it to the world. But the real world often doesn't work that way. And to make matters even worse, people often get it wrong when deciding what needs to be protected, and what doesn't.
  - Spivak 11y ago
    > Except for the loss in innovation due to companies that will not touch GPL for fear of being forced to divulge the trade secrets in their code. That's exactly the point of the GPL. Look, we as human beings would be all better off without trade secrets, without closed source, and with the explicit permission to tinker, modify, and improve the products we use every day. You as a user should want all of the rights afforded to you by the GPL. You should want to know how all of your devices work. You should want to be able to do what you please with them and not just what the company you bought it from wants you to do with it. Yes, we get it, companies don't want to tell people their secrets, but that's not the fault of the GPL. It's the fault of every user like you who is apathetic toward proprietary software, who thinks it's okay to exploit and profit off of others ignorance while perpetuating a legal framework that mandates that ignorance.
    - pbreit 11y ago
      "we as human beings would be all better off without trade secrets, without closed source, and with the explicit permission to tinker, modify, and improve the products we use every day." So, without Apple products? I don't think so. Far from it.
zobzu 11y ago
Since MIT-style licensed code gets close sourced I don't see how your logic works at all. Only few huge projects will share back, and generally only share back partially. If companies are going to choose closed-source license over open sourcing their own code if not GPL or MIT or similar code is available, they weren't going to help open source code to being with.

mordocai 11y ago

See Linux as a counter-point to this argument. If your software is good enough, has enough grass-roots support from developers, and has a good/large community around it then companies will bit the bullet and use it despite it being GPL.

Aldo_MX 11y ago
The kernel? Because I've yet to see a Linux distro that doesn't work better with non-GPL parts (ex. Proprietary Drivers).
- mordocai 11y ago
  Only for hardware. Typically for wireless and video drivers. If you use an Intel video card and Intel wireless (the former of which you can only do if you don't care for intensive 3D apps) then you can get away with no OS level proprietary software. Pretty easy to do if your only use of the machine is development work. Once you get into gaming you have to pile a ton of proprietary software (OS and otherwise) if you want to play anything recent.
baddox 11y ago
An example of a GPL project that companies do touch is not a counterpoint to the argument that lots of companies refuse to touch lots of GPL code.
- pessimizer 11y ago
  An example of a GPL project that most companies do touch is a counterpoint to the argument that the GPL prevents companies from using software. That lots of companies refuse to touch GPL code is not an argument for the proposition that "the GPL reduces the amount of quality (software) in the world."

rdtsc 11y ago

> However, this hypothetical ignores the reality that companies will often simply not touch GPL code rather than deal with compliances Some companies do they get a proprietary license from the authors in return for payment. I've seen companies pay for that. So answer doesn't necessarily have to be "we have to release all our code" it could also be the common business answer of -- pay and get a license.

minot 11y ago

> In other words, the GPL reduces the amount of quality (software) in the world and ties developers' hands for the purposes of an ill-thought-out political goal. I believe this is a plus point of GPLv3 (although more of a side-effect than a goal). I cheer for companies like Artifex which develops Ghostscript. It makes sense to me that if you're not willing to pay forward, you must pay back towards the cost of developing software. But then, I've never had to make these hard choices so my naivety shows here.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

the GPL does almost nothing for people who don't hack on code Yes, it does. Because of copyleft reciprocity, all users benefit from modified and enhanced copies to the software.

kstenerud 11y ago
Except for the loss in innovation due to companies that will not touch GPL for fear of being forced to divulge the trade secrets in their code. If a company could be sure that nothing in their code could jeopardize their competitive advantage, there'd be no problem with exposing it to the world. But the real world often doesn't work that way. And to make matters even worse, people often get it wrong when deciding what needs to be protected, and what doesn't.
- Spivak 11y ago
  > Except for the loss in innovation due to companies that will not touch GPL for fear of being forced to divulge the trade secrets in their code. That's exactly the point of the GPL. Look, we as human beings would be all better off without trade secrets, without closed source, and with the explicit permission to tinker, modify, and improve the products we use every day. You as a user should want all of the rights afforded to you by the GPL. You should want to know how all of your devices work. You should want to be able to do what you please with them and not just what the company you bought it from wants you to do with it. Yes, we get it, companies don't want to tell people their secrets, but that's not the fault of the GPL. It's the fault of every user like you who is apathetic toward proprietary software, who thinks it's okay to exploit and profit off of others ignorance while perpetuating a legal framework that mandates that ignorance.
  - pbreit 11y ago
    "we as human beings would be all better off without trade secrets, without closed source, and with the explicit permission to tinker, modify, and improve the products we use every day." So, without Apple products? I don't think so. Far from it.

zobzu 11y ago

Since MIT-style licensed code gets close sourced I don't see how your logic works at all. Only few huge projects will share back, and generally only share back partially. If companies are going to choose closed-source license over open sourcing their own code if not GPL or MIT or similar code is available, they weren't going to help open source code to being with.