[GrumpySloth]

> It is setting up a situation where users will not be free.

No. It is setting up a situation where users can choose between a free option A and a proprietary option B based on A. Being sad about A being too liberal is suggesting it’s more important for you that B doesn’t exist than that A exists.

> If you expect people to treat MIT licensed software as GPL licensed software,

I don’t. Contrary to GNU and FSF websites, GPL is not a synonym for freedom. Most people, outside of GNU-centric places like this post about Emacs, prefer more liberal licences.

[roenxi]

But it sounds like we have found agreement on the point that the MIT license is setting up an option B, where a person is blocked from contributing for legal reasons?

That is the big difference between MIT and GPL. With MIT licensed software, sometimes you have software that you can't legally adjust (or help others adjust). With GPL ... I mean it might be technically possible with some wildly creative approach but I haven't heard of such a thing.

> Most people, outside of GNU-centric places like this post about Emacs, prefer more liberal licences.

Controlling someone else's computer through legal means isn't liberal. I'm sure a liberal could call for that and accept a little ideological impurity.

If software is property, it has a new owner after it is sold and they can do what they like with it. That isn't what copyright does, it creates some sort of Frankenstein permanent-rent concept where the owner often doesn't maintain anything that is at odds with technical and market realities, relying heavily on the prosecution of victimless crimes. Which although arguably a desirable thing (I don't think so myself though) is illiberal.

[dctoedt]

> With MIT licensed software, sometimes you have software that you can't legally adjust (or help others adjust).

Really? The MIT license explicitly allows you to "modify" the software without restriction.

https://opensource.org/license/mit/

[roenxi]

The MIT license is explicitly designed to be compatible with building proprietary software. The key point of difference from the GPL is that you can use MIT code to create proprietary software.

I'm no lawyer, but it isn't even obvious to me that you have to MIT license a binary created directly from MIT licensed source code. "Software" seems to be the source code and therefore the binary probably isn't a copy or substantial portion of the MIT licensed program. Unless lawyers are redefining words on me it looks like I can compile MIT licensed source and distribute it under whatever alternate license I like.

But regardless, if the point of the license is to enable creating proprietary software, it is no stretch at all to speculate that it'll be used to create proprietary software.