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by WhatIsDukkha 2747 days ago
Why are you assuming there is a middle ground?

Many things in life have no real middle ground.

These "middle ground" licenses have yet to show a useful non-toxic instance that actually served their communities.

You have the burden of proof here.

2 comments

Middle ground exists because it is ultimately for a court to decide whether or not something is a copyright violation. These things aren't black and white. A license is a piece of legal advice which suggests the decision a court might make if it were to be taken to one, based on past judicial decisions. When it comes to new technologies and new distribution methods (or distribution loopholes), there's not much precedent to go off. The uncertainty here is the middle ground.
You are focused on enforcement which (might be interesting in an internet lawyering way) is irrelevant if noone uses the codebases in the first place because of the license makes it unuseful for users and coders.

Almost all of these "middle ground" license cannot be combined with the normal licenses that have huge functioning communities.

> You have the burden of proof here.

even transistors, the basic underpinning of our digital worlds, have middle ground - it's the norm, not the exception, and dichotomies are almost entirely a human fiction to make things more computationally tractable

the burden is yours

So we can go down rabbit holes like this I guess? I mean whats the middle ground between believing the earth is flat and the center of the universe vs a modern scientific view?

Metaphors aren't really a good thinking tool here.

Instead maybe asking (as I suggested you do) if EVEN ONE of these LICENSE schemes is actually working for the community its supposed to serve vs the pr blahblah we see in their announcements?