[mystraline]

You should change the license to AGPL and 'custom, contact for payment details', and provide a link to this as why you did so.

Simply put, anything not a viral license like GPL allows parasitization by companies effectively living off FLOSS devs, with absolutely nothing to gain. Human rights under GPL were meant to apply to humans, not '3 lawyers in a trench coat' (corporations).

They can make their decisions (snubbing a dev of code they deem good enough for enterprise). And you can make comparable decisions, punishing them for the sheer hubris.

It also reaffirms that my decision of AGPL for everything is the right one. They can contact for custom terms.

[evanelias]

> It also reaffirms that my decision of AGPL for everything is the right one. They can contact for custom terms.

Since your replies below are focusing on compensation: have you actually made a nontrivial amount of money with that model?

I would expect that should be a prerequisite to reaffirm it was the correct decision, especially if you're giving unsolicited advice to strangers about how they should license their software.

[foxglacier]

Some people want others to freely use their software and choose MIT precisely because it's more free than GPL. There's nothing wrong with just making something for free and giving it away if that's what you want. Not everybody has to be chasing money in all their activities.

The author said he was proud of this outcome and nervous at how widely his hobby project will be deployed. That sounds like the ambition of many open source authors and a win. Might never have happened with GPL.

[mejutoco]

> choose MIT precisely because it's more free than GPL.

This has been debated a lot already. It depends whose freedom we are talking about. It is overly simplistic to define MIT as more free.

[mbonnet]

It's not overly simplistic at all. It inarguably gives more freedom to do as any entity wishes with the code.

[mystraline]

> Some people want others to freely use their software and choose MIT precisely because it's more free than GPL.

MIT license is absolutely not 'more free' than the GPL.

In fact, MIT means you give up effective ownership and control. You lose control and contributions.

And what do you get for that loss of control? Exposure. Or, in this and many other cases similar, you get diddly shit. Some company paracitizes your code, sometimes even demands SOC questionnaires and 'do this bug NOW', and other abuse.

> Not everybody has to be chasing money in all their activities.

Talk about missing the point! This was all about money. It was about a job at the company where the code is being used in a production manner. And they didn't even bother to give an interview.

And not many of us are independently wealthy, and can do things that we want with no monetary care. And, most FLOSS devs aren't that. Instead, they're being used as unpaid stepping stones so some overvalued AI hypesquad can vibecode (or slotmachine programming) faster.

> The author said he was proud of this outcome and nervous at how widely his hobby project will be deployed. That sounds like the ambition of many open source authors and a win. Might never have happened with GPL.

That's where I hope the author relicenses as LGPL and proprietary, and doesn't give Anthropic any more free professional work.

And if it never would have happened with the GPL, gasp, they would have had to pay developers to create it.

And until I'm independently wealthy, I too will license AGPL. If you're making money on my stuff, I want a cut. Simple as that.

[johnnyanmac]

>MIT means you give up effective ownership and control. You lose control and contributions. And what do you get for that loss of control? Exposure. Or, in this and many other cases similar, you get diddly shit.

Isn't that what true freedom is?

You can argue that more freedom is a net burden for both the individual and society (tragedy of the commons), but that doesn't negate the aspect of it being more free to begin with.

>And not many of us are independently wealthy, and can do things that we want with no monetary care.

Indeed. But not many people contribute to any kind of OS community to begin with (regardless of the license). I would like to one day, but then the industry laid me and hundreds of thousands off in the last few years and those plans were delayed.

There definitely is a certain level of privilege in being able to provide knowledge to others on the side. Even morose if you're part of an organization that pays you to do so.

[immibis]

Maximum freedom is when people have the freedom to do everything except take away other people's freedom. When you give people the freedom to take away other people's freedom, you don't get a free society.

[aidenn0]

> And until I'm independently wealthy, I too will license AGPL. If you're making money on my stuff, I want a cut. Simple as that.

A. So much for "Not everybody has to be chasing money..." as missing the point

B. What hubris to claim that just because you wrote something it is now "yours" in any meaningful way. The copyright lobby has infected everywhere.

[mystraline]

So, what is your net-worth, in that you fight for freebies to corporations? What net worth should I strive towards so I can be nonchalant and passe about money?

I'm certainly not there.

Also more curious, is the AGPL doesn't affect humans doing stuff. It affects companies when they grab, modify, and host and not share contributions. Read about anti-TIVOization. That's why the AGPL. I'm guessing you know this, and why you're attacking my viewpoints as 'missing the point'.

And yes, copyright is everywhere. And the GPL has some of the sanest terms to reuse, as long as you follow the requirement. And the GPL also further grows the ecosystem, due to virality.

But Anthropic wasn't exactly submitting code either, were they? In my world, parasites get antiparasitic drugs.

[iqml2568]

You're mixing events. Tivoization resulted in GPLv3, while AGPL emerged as a response to SaaS.

[rcxdude]

> So, what is your net-worth, in that you fight for freebies to corporations? What net worth should I strive towards so I can be nonchalant and passe about money?

I've seen people with un-stressed about money with net-worths that are orders of magnitudes below those that seem to obsess about it.

Your motivations are your motivations, if you don't like the idea of someone using your work to make money without giving you a cut, you can do you, but why is it hard to understand that other people might just not care that much about it (or, gasp, even find their work being used more rewarding than the potential monetary compensation)

[Jensson]

> Also more curious, is the AGPL doesn't affect humans doing stuff.

It does affect humans doing stuff that isn't malicious, like if you need to solve a problem by modifying the code then now you also have to make that change public which is a hassle, I'd rather not have to track or maintain such things. I'd rather not have to think about that, and I care more about such nuisances than I care about the possibility of companies stealing it.

[flaburgan]

The scenario you are describing (discovering a problem to fix, being able to fix it, but then not sharing the fix with other people) is the exact reason why GPL has been invented: to force people to share their work, so that we can all have better software, together. Maybe the software you are using wouldn't have been that good if other people weren't forced to share their improvements. Your small effort is going to help others, and their small efforts are going to help you even more. This mindset of sharing should be natural but, as you just proved, people are lazy and so the license has to force them.

[foxglacier]

> you get diddly shit

> If you're making money on my stuff, I want a cut. Simple as that.

It's clear that you're motivated by personal compensation for your work, which is fine, but it means you shouldn't license it as MIT. Other people are motivated by knowing that their work is useful to others, and those people shouldn't use GPL because it hinders that aim.

[captainbland]

I know a bunch of people have tried to argue the toss on this one with you but I'd just like to put it out there that I can't agree strongly enough! Anyone watching can see these big companies are happy to toss developers to the side and develop social harms for profit.

All of this is built on exploiting the open source movement. Delineating between closed source ventures and Free community efforts is just good sense at this point. If they're going to take they must give back.