[kodablah]

For those that believe in software freedoms as fewer restrictions, you have to accept that people may take advantage of your fewer restrictions. This is the cost of giving more (beer) freedom, and you don't have to abandon your principles because of how it manifests. (this has obvious political analogies in other restriction-less freedom contexts too)

[bachmeier]

> For those that believe in software freedoms as fewer restrictions, you have to accept that people may take advantage of your fewer restrictions.

This argument has never made sense. "The software is more free because you can impose restrictions on the way it's used." It's more of an attempt to rationalize than a concern about the freedom of the software.

[MaxBarraclough]

To paraphrase Stallman on the topic of permissive Free Software licences:

Some people prefer permissive Free Software licences, and feel that copyleft licences like the GPL introduce unwelcome restrictions. I don't understand this objection. They're unhappy that the licence doesn't grant the power to deny other people their freedom?

[CyberRabbi]

The existence of this blog post suggests to me that they either don’t believe in total software freedom or they haven’t yet accepted that people will take advantage of it.

[kodablah]

I read it a bit different, I read it as they're proud of their freedom stance, and they are just informing users about a hostile fork without even hinting at reducing their principals henceforth.

[CyberRabbi]

Then why do they imply in the blog post that “closed source superficial rebrandings” should be avoided by potential customers?

[wrsh07]

Because zig is free? A marked up superficial re banding is a scam

[aidenn0]

They are warning contributors to not inadvertently sign a contract that would prevent them from contributing to Zig.

Me telling you there is a cliff here, be careful does nothing to infringe on your rights to walk off that cliff.

[CyberRabbi]

This is precisely my point. Why allow anyone to walk off the cliff if you’re just going to tell them it’s wrong anyway? They could have avoided all of this if it were GPL in the first place.

[aidenn0]

Because you believe in personal freedom?

[CyberRabbi]

I do not mean this disrespectfully but isn’t that taking the idea of “personal freedom” to absurdity? I believe in personal freedom as well but I don’t think walking off a cliff or maliciously using someone Else’s labor is freedom.

[aidenn0]

Tools like EULAs end up being fairly coarse in practice.

Presumably the Zig authors prefer a world in which it is possible to maliciously use the tools under MIT, and non-malicous actors could do various things downstream that the GPL would be a barrier to, to the world in which the GPL prevents both of those things.

There is a cost to preventing harms, and people will disagree whether the cost is worth it. There are many evils in this world that I do not push for collective action to eliminate merely because I do not yet see a feasible solution that is worth the cost. That doesn't preclude me from individually speaking against those things, warning people about the pitfalls of them, and shaming those who do them.

[aidenn0]

I replied to the substance of your comment already, but I also wanted to say that it's a bit frustrating to me that you are downvoted without other replies.

While "freedom" is a fairly generic term (I can be free to kill you or not free to kill you), circumscribing "personal freedom" is reasonable in such situations. Many libertarians would agree that "personal freedom" is bounded by the "Harm principle" so any supposed right to shoot you without fear of reprisal would not be included in the term "personal freedom." Those same people would probably also argue that self-harm (and behavior that places one at risk of self-harm), are absolutely part of personal freedom.

Anarchists might say that "personal freedom" encompasses the right to harm others, and would argue that the repercussions would be natural; the damage to your reputation from harming others would deny you the assistance of others that could be necessary to succeed (or even survive) in the future, and it could also open you up to reprisal.

Some people argue that "personal freedom" includes all, or nearly all forms of free speech. In the US, it is generally agreed upon that defamation and incitement to riot are exceptions due to the harm principle. Many people take it further and say that allowing e.g. a KKK parade in a town should be excluded because it causes harm to the black community by fostering an environment of fear and mistrust, resulting in mental, emotional and financial harm.

I take no disrespect, and agree that a reasonable person could exclude harm to others as part of "personal freedom" I'm less convinced that harm to self isn't "personal freedom" as I think even most of those who support e.g. seatbelt laws would agree that they are a very small infringement on personal freedom in exchange for a very large public-health benefit and are knowingly making that tradeoff.