[dnautics]

> MIT actually makes it harder for people to profit from their software than GPL, because the developer of GPL-licensed code has the exclusive right

Can you name an IC that profits from their software with the GPL?

By contrast I know of a very well-known IC that profits (handsomely) from their software with an even looser license than the MIT - SQLite.

[cercatrova]

MongoDB, Sentry, Plausible Analytics et al. use GPL, AGPL or even stronger proprietary versions such as SSPL to prevent cloud vendors from using their products. Now imagine they used MIT instead, cloud vendors could rip them off without any contributions back.

This is exactly what happened even when they used AGPL, something that was thought to scare cloud vendors, but instead it wasn't scary enough, so these companies had to invent new proprietary licenses.

[dnautics]

I was under the impression that the implication of the parent comment was IC in the literally "individual" coder sense. If you're going to be that broad there are PLENTY of well known frameworks, not even worth listing, under both MIT and GPL, that are built by organizations, or VC-backed startups, and it's hard to compare "ease of making money".

[cercatrova]

Perhaps, but each of these organizations were started by a single person and then grew. Plausible is only 2 people if I recall correctly. So I'm not sure counting purely individuals makes sense. Sqlite even isn't one person, multiple people make pull requests.

[wizzwizz4]

> Now imagine they used MIT instead, cloud vendors could rip them off without any contributions back.

Plausible used to be MIT, and exactly this happened to them.

[cercatrova]

Yep, that's why I mentioned them specifically. It's happened to a lot of companies too.