[michaelt]

Well, when viewed from the perspective of legal realism, a lot of software licensing is a joke.

I'm an open source developer - but even if Oracle had violated my license terms and I had indisputable proof of it, I wouldn't take them to court.

Arguing about the differences between GPL3 and WTFPL in a hypothetical court case is about as meaningful and productive as arguing about the differences between a chainsaw and a katana in a hypothetical zombie apocalypse.

[ivanbakel]

>I'm an open source developer - but even if Oracle had violated my license terms and I had indisputable proof of it, I wouldn't take them to court.

Why do you use a license with those terms, then?

Court cases over license violations are not hypothetical. Perhaps your stance is that licenses are frivolous, but there are plenty of people in software who don't share it. And those people, given "indisputable proof" of a significant license violation, would happily take you to court (with FSF support) to force compliance, if necessary.

[michaelt]

No, but situations where it would make sense for me to pursue a court case over a license violation are hypothetical.

Look at Oracle vs Google - Multibillion dollar companies, getting advice from the absolute top legal experts, yet they still can't agree on what is and isn't allowed by law. And getting an answer for that has taken over a decade and an eyewatering amount of money.

Now imagine I'm a Finnish developer living in South Korea who released code under an American-written license, and a Russian company infringed on it.

It's inconceivable that I'd choose to take huge personal risk and expense, sacrificing years of my free time, pursuing litigation over something I was trying to give away for free anyway.

That's not to say people can't do this stuff if they enjoy it - by all means, collect some katanas if that's your idea of fun!

[skulbuny]

Why not just use a license that explicitly says you won't use legal recourse, like the Unlicense or 0BSD, ie. release it to the public domain?

If you use MIT even you are saying "I will litigate you if you do not comply with my demand that you include this license when you use this software."

[xpe]

Saying "software licensing is a joke" and "hypothetical zombie apocalypse" may be provocative and/or funny, but it distracts attention from the underlying logic. In my view, when conversations start going down this path, they become less substantive and interesting, because the meaning becomes muddled.

I try to always remember:

* One person writes a comment one time. N people read it. N >> 1. Therefore strive to be clear.

* "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[riffraff]

> I'm an open source developer - but even if Oracle had violated my license terms and I had indisputable proof of it, I wouldn't take them to court.

that's one of the good reasons to assign copyright to a larger entity (Apache foundation, FSF, or whatever): they'll fight to defend the license when it is violated with means you do not have.

[iso1631]

So you're saying the legal system is stacked in favor of the large, so we shouldn't bother with laws at all?

If you broke Oracle's license terms they'll be suing you.

[xpe]

Large organizations often are risk averse with regards to legal matters. They don't want to be sued for misusing a license. The threat of litigation has a real effect, even if one particular individual is unlikely to bring a case.