I ask this because I think of the recent switch of Ubuntu to the Rust recode of the GNU core utils, which use an MIT license. There are many Rust recodes of GPL software that re-license it as a pushover MIT or Apache licenses. I worry these relicensing efforts this will significantly harm the FOSS ecosystem. Is this reason to start worrying or is it not that bad?
IMO, if the FOSS world makes something public, with extensive liberties, then the only thing that should be asked in return is that people preserve these liberties, like the GPL successfully enforces. These pushover licenses preserve nothing.
The switch to permissive licensing is terrible for end-user software freedom given that corporations like Apple and Sony have leeched off of FreeBSD in the past to make their proprietary locked-down OSes that took over the market. Not sure what would happen if RedoxOS became usable in production, but if it turns out to function better than Linux enough to motivate corporations to shift their focus to it, open source versions for servers would probably still exist, but hardware compatibility on end-user devices would be at higher risk than before as vendors switch their support and stop open sourcing stuff. Or they keep focusing on Linux for server stuff due to the GPL license and the fact that their infrastructure is already on it.
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GPL has certainly failed time and time again, openly in the case of FFmpeg and their clones all over Eastern Europe and elsewhere. FFmpeg made a lot of noise and resorted to “public shaming” mostly because the courts weren’t working for them. And they have a very visible product… so many GPL licensed things are lurking inside proprietary products where they’ll never be seen.
It’s like putting a license on COVID to prevent it from spreading… it just doesn’t work in the real world.
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We didn’t want to control or manipulate people, using our code to extort a particular behavior out of them.
The FOSS community, and even the community of developers on single large FOSS projects, is large and diverse… The royal “We” doesn’t really apply at all, even in the case of Linus and the kernel - sure, he’s a clear leader, but he’s hardly in control of the larger community and their wants.
I think the current state of open source licensing is much as it should be… MIT has its place, as does GPL, and if we’re going to pretend that intellectual property is about protecting creators, then it’s the creators who should get to choose.
In the world I live in, intellectual property is a barrier to entry that’s primarily used by organizations with a lot of power (money) to prevent others from disturbing their plans of making more money. MIT seems most appropriate for individual creators to assure that that world doesn’t come crashing into their bedroom with CDOs and lawsuits. GPL is “cute” - but I think most practitioners of GPL licensing don’t have any clue how far out of their depth they are if they should ever seek actual enforcement of their self-declared license terms. That’s not to say GPL is toothless. It gives small players a tool to amplify the trouble they can make for those who would violate their license (primarily mode of violation being by use of the code so licensed.) But, other than making minor trouble for the bigger players, thus discouraging the bigger players from entangling with them, GPL isn’t going to “make” the bigger players do much of anything other than stay away.
GPL does shape the community, it has its effects, I just get tired of hearing about the specific immediate legal language of it, because that’s far from the actual effects it has.
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without money involved
Without money involved the court system is useless. The whole point of legal action around contracts is to determine what happens when the agreements of contracts have been broken.
I gotta say I’m a bit concerned about this whole corporate takeover thing goin on in FOSS land. If companies start slapdin’ MIT or Apache licenses on GPL software that’s supposed to be all about freedom and whatnot, it does seem like a bit of a cop-out and it could have some pretty serious consequences for the community.
Here’s solution to problem https://lemmy.ml/comment/22277779
Let’s see how this goes then revisit the question.
Yes.
Anyone who cares about user freedoms is not choosing a permissive licence.
The problem is developers only caring about themselves and other developers.
When I talk to devs I know who like FOSS, they are always focussed on their needs as a dev when it comes to licences. The real concern was, and always should be, for the software user’s freedoms.
God forbid developers earning something for their work
Developers should absolutely get paid for their work, but as @mina86@lemmy.wtf said, that is is a different issue. There are plenty of companies that employ developers of FOSS code, both copyleft and permissive licence.
I like non-copyleft licenses for one reason. Imagine if ffmpeg devs were like:
so many security vulnerabilities, your free labor is bad thanks for pointing that out, it’s not longer free
Most devs (including me) want to have some control over what they made. Permissive licenses allow rugpulling project if someone is using it while making YOU do stuff. ffmpeg is a great example. You may not like it but that’s how it is.
How does permissive licensing lead to corporate takeover? Companies can do proprietary forks of permissively licensed foss projects, but they can’t automatically take over the upstream.
Permissive licensing can create what is effectively “software tivoization” (the restriction or dirty interpretation of distribution and modification rights of software by the inclusion of differently-licensed components).
The Bitwarden case is a good example of how much damage can be done to a brand with merely the perception of restrictive licensing. obviously, bitwarden has clarified the mess, but not before it was being called ‘proprietary’ by the whole oss community.
So I don’t think op is referring to direct corporate takeover, but damage caused by corporate abuse of a fork.
To quote Brian Lunduke, because the GPL is viral and functioning systems licensed under the GPL have been published, if a future Rust-based MIT version of Linux ever comes out, we can just “Fork it, then we’ll have our own Linux.”
To paraphrase Brian Lunduke: This software has gone woke! That software has gone woke! Boo woke software!
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One side community wants total GPL take over and one side they don’t support total GPLv3 licenced Operating system like
Why are they pushover licenses? Because they don’t force people to contribute back? Because a lot of companies aren’t doing that for GPL licensed software either.
Also not really sure how this would allow a takeover, because control of the project is not related to the license.
It’s not so much about forcing to contribute, but rather keeping companies from selling commercial forks/having checks against profiting from work that happens to be freely available.
I’m thinking of the Apache project, and all the important projects it covers that are under an Apache license and I’m not sure where the sudden worry comes from.
HTTPD and Nginx have had very permissive licensing for years and seem to do fine.
The GPL doesn’t force to contribute. But if you make changes to it, you need to have these changes reflect the liberties you yourself received. Megacorporations use the so-called “Explore, Expand, Exterminate” model, the GPL stops this from happening.
You can just wrap the software in a binary and interact with the binary and you will likely elude the GPL terms. This is kinda grey area but it would be hard to win against it in court. (I am not a lawyer)
I mean that broadly because nobody will make proprietary Coreutils or sudo as someone already pointed out.
It is concerning, yeah. I usually license my own software with MIT, but, not all of it, and I think GPL is very important for Linux.
Also on that topic, very interesting read:
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You’re the only user catching downvotes
Check the rest of the thread 🤣
People in here don’t work in the space, and are clearly not knowledgeable about the subject. They can downvote me all they want.
I did, twice
