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by appplication 1040 days ago
There’s nothing wrong with that, and there’s nothing wrong with people who want to build GPL software - do what you like, consistent with your ideals. This is really only in response to the perennial “why don’t more people use GPL” questions that seem to always pop up any time software licensing is discussed. It’s fine for some people, but there’s a reason corps tend to avoid it or have internal policies against using GPL software.
2 comments
pydry 1040 days ago
>why don’t more people use GPL” questions that seem to always pop up any time software licensing is discussed

millions of people use it. the perennial question is why does the license make people so unreasonably angry?

>there’s a reason corps tend to avoid it

it's the same reason they try to assign IP you dreamt up in the shower to themselves in perpetuity with no exceptions - a combination of corporate greed, hubris and lawyerly risk aversion.

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appplication 1040 days ago
I don’t agree with the greed and runaway capitalism that drives it, I’m just observing it exists.

People tend not to like it because it’s restrictive to the point of being off limits in many real world use cases. Bob works on the platform team at at GigaCorp. He’s overworked, and found a great OSS product that does exactly what he needs and could save him weeks or months of effort. Except because it’s GPL, he can’t touch it.

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chii 1040 days ago
> save him weeks or months of effort.

so it's worth the time, and thus money to pay. Therefore, if he's got a brain, he would ask for corporate money to buy a commercial license, and do away with the risks of GPL.

Except he doesn't, because the corp (or he himself) believes that it should be free somehow?

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pydry 1040 days ago
Bob has a wonderful opportunity to channel GigaCorp's deep pockets and penchant for extreme risk aversion towards supporting open source.

Bob could just whine at the developer, of course, for not making his day at a well paid job slightly easier.

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josephcsible 1040 days ago
> It’s fine for some people, but there’s a reason corps tend to avoid it or have internal policies against using GPL software.

But the only reason for such anti-GPL policies is so that the corporations can ensure their software remains proprietary, which is inherently wrong.

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