[vin047]

This is exactly what the AGPL was made to combat against. But open source devs still choose more permissive licenses first - presumably to attract corporate clients to use their product (and because devs are suckers to large corporate interests)

[palata]

This. They choose a permissive licence, proudly advertise it ("use us instead of our competitor because they are copyleft and we are not"), and then come whining when other competitors benefit from the very fact that they chose a permissive licence.

[_msw_]

There are different FOSS communities that hold different values. I come from the copyleft camp because I want to advance Software Freedom objectives for end-users. Others are more interested in advancing software developer freedom, and they find the obligations that are designed to advance end-user rights are unduly burdensome to the software developer. Articles like the one on the FreeBSD website [1] explain why they take a different position

I choose to believe that both of these sub-communities of the larger FOSS community are principled in their beliefs. I don’t see whining from FreeBSD folks about competitors, or for-profit companies using all the permissions they give with their choice of license.

[1] https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/bsdl-gpl/

[palata]

> I don’t see whining from FreeBSD folks about competitors

Sure! Then that's all good! I have nothing against the use of permissive licences (though I am on the copyleft camp too, obviously). Or put it in the public domain.

My problem is with those who do and then whine about it.

[_msw_]

Yeah, that really grinds my gears too.

It especially bugs me when company blogs call out “abuse” when they only exist as a company because others gave them the permissions needed to build a business on software they did not author themselves!