[arca_vorago]

I just have to say, while I respect the work and have been looking forward to nix tools being ported to rust, the first thing I do is see if it's GPL or not and if it's not it immediately loses points (not all of them), because I have been working hard to free up my stacks. I wish people would consider making core system tools like this GPL instead of MIT/BSD styles. Tivoization is a real threat to the freedom of users and devs. (which is what mit license enables, despite it being listed as "gpl compat")

For example, I forced myself to learn screen really well because even though I like tmux and it has some features lacking in screen, I would rather support a tool I know is more aligned with freedom for the user. Same with i3 vs awesome, etc.

An interesting side benefit of this is I have noticed the complexity of my stack has been reduced because of this selectiveness.

[eridius]

I just have to say, while I respect the work put into tools of the sort that you use, the first thing I do is see if it's GPL or not and if it is it immediately loses points (very nearly all of them), because GPL is awful. If I'm going to use a tool like this, I'm going to want to be able to check out the code, perhaps submit PRs, etc, but if it's GPL then I don't want to so much as look at the code because GPL is viral and aggressively removes so many developer freedoms.

In fact, I genuinely don't understand the "freedom for the user" aspect. The only "freedoms" the GPL cares about are freedoms for developers (end users don't care in the slightest about whether they can get the source code, etc), but GPL is far and away the most restrictive license I've ever seen in terms of taking away developer freedoms. So when people say the GPL provides freedom for the user, it makes no sense, because what it's doing is taking away freedoms from anyone who actually cares about source access. In fact, all the GPL really seems to do is protect the "freedom" of the original developer to ensure access to any changes made by other people, at the cost of taking away the freedoms of all of these other people.

[LukeShu]

There are two points I want to address.

1. "the GPL really seems to do is protect the "freedom" of the original developer to ensure access to any changes made by other people" The GPL literally does not do that, the "other people" only have to give the modified sources to people who get the binary from them; they don't have to give the modified sources back to the original developer. As a non-theoretical example, the Grsec guys only give their Linux kernel modifications to their customers, and do not give the modifications back upstream to Linux. It's about making sure that the end user gets access to the code, which I know you said is silly because the users "don't care in the slightest", but...

2. You re-defining user to be someone who doesn't look at the code is silly. Given a piece of software I have absolutely no intention of being a "developer" for, I would still like to receive the source code. I would like to be able to study it to figure out how it works, the same as when I took apart and studied clocks as a kid (an activity that didn't magically transmute me from a "clock user" into a "clock maker"!). When some software on my computer (or the computer of a friend or family member) breaks, I would like to be able to pop open the source and see what's going on, the same as when I pop the hood when something goes wrong with a car--I'm not interacting with that software as a "developer", just as I'm not interacting with the car as a "car maker". Sure, the fact that I am a developer means I'm pretty qualified to know what I'm looking at when I look at the source, just as being an engineer at an auto company would make me pretty qualified to know what I'm looking at when I pop the hood of my car. But fundamentally, the relationship I have with that software/car is that of a user, not that of a developer. And even if I weren't a programmer, I would want to receive the source, so that when it breaks, and I ask my nephew or whoever to look at it, that he can see the source and isn't locked out from helping me out. We don't call farmers "engineers" for fighting for the "right to repair" their own farm equipment; and we shouldn't call computer users "developers" for fighting for the right to repair their own computers.

[Drdrdrq]

No, "freedom for the user" is exactly what it says. GPL cares about end user, not so much about developer. Original developer just gets to decide which group is more important in his particular case.

[eridius]

Read what I said. The "end user" doesn't care in the slightest about source access. Everything the GPL is concerned about only matters to other developers, not to end users.

[goodplay]

As an end-user, I do. Being prevented from fixing my own (expensive) device is not something I would voluntarily subject myself to. For context, here's a comment I posted a while ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527205):

I used to be a big fan of permissive licenses until I bought a $700+ android phone a couple of years back and discovered that it did not "support" my native language (it could render the glyphs but system-wide support was not enabled).

Having extensive experience with unicode and how text is usually rendered, I knew exactly how to fix the issue; the fix was likely as simple as injecting an SO that hijacks a specific system library function. However, because the phone was locked down, I was unable to fix the problem myself. All important system apps including SMS and the browser displayed gibberish.

It was the most expensive brick I ever bought. This experience taught me the true value of the GPL and why user freedom far outweighs the freedom of developers

[eridius]

> Being prevented from fixing my own (expensive) device is not something I would voluntarily subject myself to

If you can fix it, you're a developer, not a plain old user.

[wtetzner]

You're suggesting that developers can't be users? Also, end users don't have to be the ones to fix things to benefit. If they're unhappy with something, they would have the freedom to pay a developer to customize their software however they like, or even get a skilled friend to work on it.

Being able to work on my own car is an important freedom, even if I don't know anything about cars. I can get a knowledgeable friend to look at it, or I can hire a mechanic, and it doesn't have to be a mechanic from the manufacturer.

Also, it doesn't matter how much of the population uses their freedom for it to be important.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

In fact, the complexity of your system has probably increased. I find the quality of software generally available under the GPL is inferior to that available under more permissive licenses, and in most cases that's due to huge amounts of unnecessary complexity. This may just be bias introduced by GNU, though. In some cases the GPL gets in the way of progress, such as the decable over GCC being able to export its AST for other tools to interact with - a feature RMS rejected on the grounds that it would make it possible to make nonfree tools that integrate with GCC.

[mhh__]

The GCC AST thing was due to politics inside GNU, not explicitly related to the GPL.

[notheguyouthink]

I'm not too familiar with licensing, can someone ELI5? Eg, normally I just choose MIT because licensing is not a concern of mine. I'd like credit, but beyond that, do whatever the hell you want with my work. Now, I'm not making core nix tools, but should I be choosing a different license?

Man do I hate licensing.

[ac29]

BSD style licences dont require source code changes to be released. For example, the PS4 OS is based in part on FreeBSD, which is distributed as binaries. Sony is under no obligation to release any source code changes or contribute anything upstream. Copyright holders for people who wrote FreeBSD code have no legal standing to sue for access to these changes either (I think, but I am not a lawyer).

By contrast Android devices all run the Linux Kernel, which is licenced under the GPLv2. Android device makers are obligated to release the kernel code they use, so users or upstream developers could use it. It's a bit more complicated than that, because the code doesnt necessarily have to be able to be loaded on the device (GPLv2 doesn't say anything about locked bootloaders or cryptographic signing, for example, and binary blobs that work in tandem with GPL code are a bit of a grey area, as far as I know).

Parent commenter prefers the latter style, or possibly even GPLv3, which imposes additional restrictions on what you can do. See Tivoization [0].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

[leeoniya]

"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." clause made JSLint's license incompatible with MIT [1].

"He has, however, granted "IBM, its customers, partners, and minions" permission "to use JSLint for evil", a solution which appeared to satisfy IBM's lawyers."

:D

Given IBM's history of making Jew-counting machines for the Germans during WWII, that exception is particularly disturbing.

Also JSON [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford

[2] http://www.json.org/license.html

[jancsika]

> "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." clause made JSLint's license incompatible with MIT [1].

This is so frustrating. One of Crockford's most persuasive points in his writing and lectures about Javascript is that computer programs are no place for self-expression. When he explains what is wrong with the language, he gives astute suggestions on foolproof ways to workaround the language's weak points by avoiding ambiguity. He's even written JSLint to help the programmer do just that without having to research every idiosyncratic pitfall that would come from just winging it.

Yet here he is-- in a domain for which he has absolutely no expertise-- expressing himself in a licensing clause. Causing measurable hours of waste because Debian or IBM or insert-org-here has no experience with his idiosyncratic license and no easy way to predict what are its effects.

[LukeShu]

Any recommendation of a "default" license to use if you don't care too much about licensing will always carry strong opinions of whoever is recommending it. So, instead, here's a decision tree of good recommendations based on the two biggest decisions that factor in to choosing a license:

                          start
                            |
                            V
           if I modify it, and give someone a
          compiled binary of that, should I also
         have to give (or offer) them the source?
                       |        |
                   yes |        | no
                       |        V
                       |      MIT/X11 license
                       |     (alternatively,
                       |      Apache 2.0, or
                       |      2- or 3-clause BSD)
                       V
                is it a library
                 or a program?
                   /      \
          library /        `----, program
                 V               \
    can it be used by programs    \
     that DON'T give/offer the     \
       source with binaries?        \
           |         \               \
       yes |          \ no            V
           V           `-----------> GNU GPL
        GNU LGPL                    (alternatively, GNU AGPL)

Whether or not you think the "default" choice to each question should be "yes" or "no" is something that people argue about plenty; whichever you choose, someone will tell you you chose wrong.

As for the "alternatives" in parenthesis at the leaves of the chart: if you don't care about licenses, the default is probably fine, but if someone told you that you should use one of the alternatives at that leaf, I wouldn't argue. (Apache 2.0 comes in over MIT if you care about patents, AGPL comes in over GPL if you care about SaaSS)

[e12e]

It's a good chart, but I'd add: is the source code meant to be an example/educational and/or is trivial[1]: cc0 - somewhere on the top right.

[1] by definition trivial code isn't copyrightable - but "trivial" is subjective. If you, as the author feel it is, might as well clearly signal that and use cc0.

[eridius]

If you don't care about licensing, MIT, or BSD, is a fantastic choice. Definitely don't choose GPL. The only people who should ever choose GPL are people who do care about licensing and have specifically made the decision that they like what the GPL does. But if you don't care about licensing, then you can't make an informed choice about whether GPL is appropriate, and it's far better to err on the side of using a permissive license (e.g. MIT or BSD) than using a restrictive viral license like GPL.

[LukeShu]

If you don't care about licensing, GPL is a fantastic choice. Definitely don't choose MIT or BSD. The only people who should ever choose MIT are people who do care about licensing and have specifically made the decision that they like what the MIT license does. But if you don't care about licensing, then you can't make an informed choice about whether MIT is appropriate, and it's far better to err on the side of using a copyleft license (e.g. GNU) than using a permissive license like MIT.

You've just said "if you can't make an informed decision, then you should make the choice that I agree with" (from other comments, you clearly are someone who does care about licensing, and don't like the GPL). It works just as well both ways. You even slipped in some loaded propaganda words ("restrictive viral"), just in case anyone had any doubt that you weren't offering objective advice.

Fundamentally, there's a choice, and there's no getting around that with "if you don't care" defaults.

[eridius]

No, I said if you can't make an informed decision, go with the licenses that are widely regarded as being the least restrictive.

> You even slipped in some loaded propaganda words

GPL proponents describe the GPL as viral, and I'd be surprised if anyone tried to argue that it's not a restrictive license, so I'd hardly call that "propaganda".

> If you don't care about licensing, GPL is a fantastic choice.

This is incredibly wrong, and it's kind of horrifying to me to see you try and trick uninformed people into picking something viral and restrictive like the GPL. You should be ashamed of yourself.

If you don't care about licensing, do not pick GPL. The license exists specifically for people that believe in what that license does, and it's literally the worst possible license choice for someone who doesn't care about the license.

[wtetzner]

> it's literally the worst possible license choice for someone who doesn't care about the license.

Why is that? Because with the GPL you can't as easily capitalize commercially on the work of others at no cost? Or because picking a more permissive permissive license means that other people can keep their improvements to the source you provided proprietary?

The GPL seems like the safest choice if you don't know what to pick.

[eridius]

It's only "safest" in that it puts a bunch of restrictions that the original developer hopefully cares about. If the original developer doesn't care about licensing, then they don't care about those restrictions and so having them in place is counterproductive.

GPL is the worst choice because it's basically the most restrictive license I can think of, and it's intentionally viral, which makes GPL-licensed software dangerous to work with (the source of) by anyone who hasn't already bought into the GPL ecosystem.

[e12e]

I'm a big proponent/believer in copyleft - to the point that I would often recommend gpl v3 or agpl. But I also think you're right - if you don't know/care, permissive is the way to go.

But I would actually recommend cc0. Especially for small, trivial projects - I guess I can see that people want attribution - but I think cc0 can sometimes makes things much easier. This is especially true for projects that are meant to be educational/example code.

It clears up any and all confusions about copy-pasting and so on. The main counterpoint is that mit, apache (Apl) and 2/3-clause bsd are all well-known.

If I had to recommend just one licence it would probably be Apl, due to the patent grant.

[eridius]

I'm agree that something like cc0 is a good idea for sample code, or code that is otherwise intended to be copy&pasted. I don't think libraries are usually intended to be copy&pasted though, so a license like MIT or BSD is more appropriate.

I'm not familiar with the Apl license.

My personal preference at this point is to dual-license under both The Apache License, Version 2.0 and MIT. The Apache license has a patent grant and it also has the nice property where it doesn't include the name of the copyright holder so you only need one copy of the license even if you're using 20 different Apache-licensed libraries. And the dual license under MIT is just because MIT is a simpler and more well-known license, so this is to avoid scaring off anyone who isn't familiar with the Apache license.

[e12e]

Apl (or rather "APL"): apache public licence :)

[eridius]

AFAIK there is no license called the "apache public license". There is the "Apache License, Version 2.0" and the older "Apache License, Version 1.1". I actually searched DDG for "APL license" and came up with something I'd never seen before called the "Adaptive Public License".