[phillebaba]

Well your license is only as good as you are able to enforce it. Even with the law there is no guarantees.

I grew up thinking that people would follow the spirit of open source rather than the specific letter of the law. This is obviously not true, and probably never has been.

[udev4096]

No license stops someone from spinning off an OSS project into their closed-sourced enterprise offering. It's just sad that most corps see nothing wrong with this

[Ajedi32]

GPL definitely does.

[pabs3]

The GPL (and AGPL) are easy to comply with for a corporation, or anyone else really. Just redistribute your modifications under the same license, and ensure users can run modified versions on devices you distribute and you are done.

[nordsieck]

> GPL definitely does.

Clearly it doesn't because companies get caught doing it with GPL software all the time.

... and the only recourse is to sue them into compliance.

[nativeit]

Were folks under the impression there were other options for license violations? Your comment implies that a lawsuit being the only recourse to enforce a license renders that license moot.

[debugnik]

Some people just hoped that picking a corporate-unfriendly license would be enough of a deterrent by itself, because most folks can't actually afford to sue. But infringers, big and small, are increasingly realising that these licenses are toothless by themselves, they need to be backed by money.

[nativeit]

I don’t disagree with any of that, I think the challenge is certainly the costs of enforcement. For GPL licenses anyway (I realize the OP used the more permissive MIT license) I think their is (or there should be) a non-profit foundation established to collectivize the funding and legal actions necessary to support open source projects in these kinds of scenarios. Certainly, pursuing license violations in a manner that maximizes awareness and makes examples out of violators should prompt others to reconsider their actions.

[trelane]

On the other side, some people hoped that picking a "corporate-friendly" license would make megacorps good citizens. It has worked out poorly.