[nickpsecurity]

MIT licensed code is a gift. A gift indeed doesn't require the recipient to give back anything related to the gift.

A "gift" requiring GPL-like conditions isn't really a gift in the common sense. It's more like a contractual agreement with something provided and specific, non-negotiable obligations. They're giving while also asserting control over others' lives, hoping for a specific outcome. That's not just a gift.

People doing MIT license are often generous enough where the code is a gift to everyone. They don't try to control their lives or societal outcomes with extra obligations. They're just giving. So, I'm grateful to them for both OSS and business adaptations of their gifts.

[vacuity]

While the FSF's vision for the GPL is clear, the GPL itself is not so powerful that it is more than a "gift" that has some terms if you want to do certain things you are not obligated to do. It is like a grant that enforces some reasonable conditions so the money isn't just misappropriated. I wouldn't give that to a friend for their birthday, but I think it's reasonable that powerful organizations should not be free to do whatever they want. Not that the GPL is perfect for that use, but it's good.

[pessimizer]

> It's more like a contractual agreement with something provided and specific, non-negotiable obligations.

The obligation is not to the author of the code, it is to the public. MIT-style licenses are gifts to people and companies who produce code and software, copyleft licenses are gifts to the public.

I don't give a shit about the happiness of programmers any more than the happiness of garbage collectors, sorry. I don't care more that you have access to the library you want to use at your job writing software for phones than I care that somebody has access to the code on their own phone. You're free to care about what you want, but the pretense at moral superiority is incoherent.

It is non-negotiable. GPL is basically proprietary software. It's owned by the public, and all of the work that you do using it belongs to the public. If you steal it, you should be sued into the ground.

[pstoll]

I get what your saying but I think it’s not the best way to describe it - “GPL is property”? Hardly - it’s a societal common good that can be used by anyone interested in helping that common good.

Are parks “proprietary”? I can’t run my car dealership from one, so it’s …proprietary? No. So using the terminology of “proprietary” doesn’t do justice to what it actually is.

[wredcoll]

The phrasing is a little awkward but I like the sentiment: gpl software is owned by the public/humanity/the commons/etc in the same way something like the grand canyon should be.

[mcdonje]

Public property is different from private property, which is different from personal property.

[nickpsecurity]

A gift is when you do something without expecting anything in return, esp compensation.

If I use GPL'd code, I have to keep releasing my modifications for free because it's mandated. I have to do that even if I do 1000 hours of labor but they gave me 30 min of it. So, it's also near-infinite work required in return for finite work they did. And I have to bind others to this with my own work.

That's not someone giving me a gift. I'm not sure what to call that except a collective work with permanent obligations for all parties. It's more like a job or corporate charter or something. I like another person's claim that it's creating property with requirements for those using it (which copyright certainly does).

[fragmede]

> If I use GPL'd code, I have to keep releasing my modifications for free because it's mandated.

Pedantically, only recipients of your updated binary are owed updated source, so if you're not distributing that binary to the whole world, you're not required to release updated source to the whole world. Kind of a nitpick, but maybe not.

[procaryote]

If you intend to spend 1000 hours extending a gpl project someone put 30 minutes into, and you wouldn't have wanted to use GPL, perhaps don't use that project as a base? Spend 1000.5 hours and pick whatever license you like

The point of copyleft is that the author wants the code to remain available to the public, not to give it as a gift to whoever wants to build their own closed source system

[phkahler]

>> That's not someone giving me a gift.

You're right. GPL code is not a gift to you its a gift to the public.

Dont try to build your house or business in a national park.

[naasking]

MIT is throwing a free party where food and drinks are paid for, and copyleft is where food is paid for but you BYOB. Both are fine, so what's the problem?

[cryptonector]

That's my question. Why is this thread full of license choice flamewar? Do we have nothing of substance to contribute?

Here, I'll make a substantive contribution. I hope this succeeds and causes a lowest-common denominator Linux ABI to exist that user-land can target, thus freeing us all from the Linux kernel as the only viable option. Solaris/Illumos, the BSDs, and even Windows have all gone through one or two phases of attempting Linux ABI compatibility, ultimately giving up because the Linux ABI is such a fast-moving and underdocumented target.

[nickpsecurity]

Someone implied that people were evil if they gave away software with nothing asked in return. I didn't think the author deserved that. I'm also starting to think such people are at war with both private property and generosity for political reasons leaning toward socialism or communism. That segment also tries to pressure others to adopt their ideas.

So, I defended the author and the concept of generosity. I also tried to help FOSS people reframe what their doing as collective property or work so everyone understands the tradeoffs better. They confuse people by advocating for "free" or "freedom" with licenses that take away freedoms from authors. It's like they're redefining words to have non-standard meanings but get angry when people act on standard morals or word usages.

I'm also starting to think the confusion was intentional because many of their arguments look like socialism or communism disguised as software advice. We also see the same failure modes across most projects and products. Like communist nations (eg Shenzhen), we see the GPL projects succeed best when they relied on capitalists instead of communist principles for code contributions. So, I'll eventually look to see if people like Stallman were communist and if this was sneaky, ideological warfare or subversion. Like we see with critical theory ("woke") proponents constantly repacking their ideas (eg DEI, Codes of Conduct) to snesk them in where they'd be rejected after peer review. I feel like so much fighting online started with people doing something evil built on a conflict-oriented philosophy (Marxism/Communism) that causes the same destructive effects everywhere people promoted it.

[phkahler]

There is a huge distinction between socialism/communism and Free Software.

1) the marginal cost of software is zero.

2) some software is becoming more like infrastructure that everyone uses.

In the physical world, some infrastructure is privatized, some is regulated, and some is provided by the government. But going back to point 1 we see that privatization makes even less sense (to society) with software.

[eggy]

I agree, and even if a company doesn't give back, they further the popularity and sustainability of the project. Isn't Python an MIT-like license (PSFL)? As well as React and Godot? And Tensorflow is also permissive with Apache 2.0, corrrect?

[phkahler]

Godot is meant to be used for commercial games, so it should have an MIT, BSD, or LGPL license.

I'm done with proprietary operating systems and IMHO everyone should be. There's no reason to support that.

[imiric]

A gift where the recipient can remove the freedoms that they've been enjoying themselves is a bad deal for ensuring those freedoms are available to everyone. A permissive license is a terrible idea for a F/LOSS kernel.

This is the paradox of tolerance, essentially.

Also, seeing F/LOSS as a "gift" is an awful way of looking at it.

[nickpsecurity]

They can't remove it. They gave it to you. They just don't have to keep giving you more stuff. Many people think they're owed more software, including fixes to software, without compensating the laborer. That worldview is the real problem.

So, we have a variety of licensing styles that meet various goals. People can pick what suits their needs and wants. That's a good thing.

[imiric]

> They can't remove it. They gave it to you. They just don't have to keep giving you more stuff.

Who is "they" in this context?

A permissive license allows anyone to take someone else's work, profit from it, and never contribute back to the original project. For someone advocating for fairness, it's remarkable how you ignore this very real and common scenario.

> Many people think they're owed more software, including fixes to software, without compensating the laborer. That worldview is the real problem.

Compensation is orthogonal to F/LOSS. Authors are free to choose whatever income streams they like, and many successful businesses have been built around F/LOSS. Whoever is expecting people to work without compensation is being unreasonable, of course.

But F/LOSS as a social movement goes beyond a mere financial transaction. It works on the basis of mutual trust, where if I share something you find valuable, then the acceptable "payment" for that work is for you to do the same. This collaborative effort is how the highest quality products are produced.

The irony of your point is that a permissive license allows precisely the scenario you're arguing against. We've seen corporations profit from the work of others without compensating them for it. So much so, that OSS projects are forced to roll back their permissive licenses, often going too far in the other direction, to where they can no longer be labeled as "Open Source". E.g. Elastic: Apache -> SSPL -> AGPL; Redis: BSD -> SSPL; HashiCorp: MPL -> BSL; etc.

That is the actual problem which copyleft licenses prevent.

[nickpsecurity]

Re fairness

Not giving anything back is fair because the author's license specifically allows them to do that. A gift has no expectation of anything in return. God blesses such generosity because it's a a truly, selfless act.

re compensation

Compensation is not orthogonal to FLOSS. Copyright was mainly designed to ensure work couldn't be shared without paying the author. Anything given for free dramatically decreases the chance of getting paid. OSS and FLOSS almost guarantee no money is made on standalone software but GPL with CLA's allows dual licensing to recover some.

If anyone uses permissive licenses, it's a gift where they're not (in legal terms) expecting money. Some try to sell it or ask for donations, too, which is incompatible with the license. The free license usually undermines that. It works for some people to some degree, though.

Re roll backs

I didn't argue against any scenario. The original person I replied to appeared to be arguing that it was evil to give software away with no obligations. I had to explain what a gift is and why it's morally good to give. I believe the reason is years of people promoting FOSS politics which I now see are rooted in ideas similar to socialism or communism. It wouldn't surprise me if Stallman was a closet communist and just repackaged those ideas into software licensing.

(Note: I feel like I'm going to have to think more on that political angle given I've been influenced by such people for years on these sites. I'll do a fresh take at some point.)

On companies being unsustainable, I've already explained what happened. Their goal included selfish gain (money/contributions) from selfish entities who normally take but don't give. Their goal was also to build, individually or collectively, a shared work. They used a license that said it's a one-time gift with no obligations. So, entities took the gift and felt no obligations to return anything. Surprise!

Now, they've changed to licenses that suit their commercial and/or property goals. That may or may not work for them. Whereas, the companies successfully marketing proprietary software are able to build it up to their hearts' content. Some companies give out the source or dual license under GPL/AGPL. They should probably do Parity License to close remaining gaps and see if FOSS people are really about the free commons.

License Zero and Polyform have new licenses to help. I conceptualized some in the past that allow modifications, forks, etc so long as the customer keeps paying. Then, redistribution among paying customers. I'd like to see more models for people aiming for sustainability with software freedoms baked in.

[phkahler]

>> Many people think they're owed more software, including fixes to software, without compensating the laborer. That worldview is the real problem.

Many people (corporations) think they're owed more money beyond the labor. This is why SaaS is a major business model these days. The marginal cost of software is zero, and yet people expect to keep getting paid for it over and over.

[phkahler]

Thay "holier than thou" attitude from BSD/MIT proponents seems like some kind of ego talking. Freedom to deny others the freedom you had is not noble.

GPL is a gift that keeps giving.

[nickpsecurity]

Using the legal system to force other people to do what you want and perpetually isn't freedom: it's controlling others by force to make them live the way you want them to. You're taking away their personal freedoms, like sharing or not sharing their work, to promote or force compliance with a goal of yours. Again, that's control, not freedom.

Would you want people controling your property based on their current and future desires? And dictating what you do with your property enhancements? Would you call that giving you more freedom? Or denying you freedom to force you to support their goals for your property?

[fragmede]

It's stupid to discuss this in the abstract because what you want to do with your property is very relevant. If you want to paint your fence a weird color and that's what's being prohibited by law is different is totally different from if you want to build a heavy polluting chemical processing factory or a poorly run slaughter house with animals squealing at all hours of the day.