Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Devasta 1622 days ago
No one except the most credulous buffoons really believed the "MIT is more free" nonsense about the GPL, it is, was, and always will be a push to move away from "Free as in Freedom" to "Free as in Free Tech Support".

Large Corps won't use your code if its AGPL? Thats a feature, code away without worrying about breaking anything!

3 comments

It's so funny that if you say that actually the GPL is good because random corporations can't freely utilize it with zero consequence and make money off your labor, you'll get a bunch of bedbugs come out of nowhere saying uhhhhhhhhmmmm, actually you're the one hurting "free" software, somehow, for being so difficult, so cruel, because how dare you prevent others from writing even more computer programs, can't you understand N+1 programs in the world is better than N? And that you are the one who stopped it, you selfish selfish person? And that someone else could have even made money off that? You've practically robbed them pre-emptively with intent. And you wouldn't want to scare away the 9-figure corporation by being mean... would you?

Sorry but I don't consider letting Lucy set up the football and giving it a solid go to be kind and equitable. It's called "being a mark."

Having a license where "network use is distribution" seems to be a must these days.

I also recently found the European Union Public License (EUPL, e.g. [0]), which seems similar to the AGPL. Might be interesting to Europeans. The translations being available in multiple languages is really nice. It being a less often used license could also be a feature.

[0] https://choosealicense.com/licenses/eupl-1.2/

EUPL is severable, unlike GPL family. GPL is explicitly non-severable.
Unfortunately it's compatibility clause means it's only as strong as GPL...
I don't have any problem releasing stuff under permissive licenses like MIT.

What you shouldn't do is have unrealistic expectations about the software you release. If you give stuff away for free, expect that you're giving it away for free. If people ask for free support, and you don't want to give it, be prepared to tell them so. Also, don't expect that there is any unwritten expectation for anything in return.

Your license is your agreement with your users. If it doesn't outline what you want, you picked the wrong one.

I'd use GPL if I wanted to expend the effort trying to force people to contribute to my projects. But that isn't always the case.