[superstarryeyes]

why not? isn't mit just objectively a better license for open source? i just hope rss would make a comeback to make the internet a little saner again, and if someone wants to use hys source code as a base for their own rss reader, whether commercial or not, great!

[palata]

Copyleft licences "care about the user" as in "as a user, I want you to be able to patch the code you run so I enforce it in my licence". It's a different philosophy from permissive licences that say "companies can use them in their closed, proprietary product, I just want them to mention somewhere that they use my code". Note that more often than not, those using permissive licences don't even bother to follow that simple rule.

As a user, I'm happier with copyleft. I like to take my Marshall smart speaker as an example: that thing doesn't get any updates, ever. But it connects to the Internet. The app absolutely sucks, the connectivity is passable at best (often frustrating), but the hardware itself is nice (it looks nice in my living room and the sound is good when it works).

If all the open source software running inside that thing was GPLv3, Marshall would have to provide me with a way to patch it. So at the very least I could make security updates myself. But because Marshall used permissively-licenced dependencies, they locked it down in such a way that I can't do that.

The permissive licence helped Marshall, but for me as a user, the code may as well be proprietary.

[palata]

It also has an impact on contribution. In my experience with small open source projects, if I licence my library permissively, people will almost never contribute or open source anything. They will gladly ask for bugfixes and features, though.

If I use a copyleft licence (I like EUPL or MPLv2), it doesn't mean that they will open clean PRs, but at least they have to publish their changes in their own fork. It has happened to me that I could go read a fork, find a few things that were interesting and bring them back to my project.

With permissive licences, the risk is that those (typically businesses) who keep their fork open source probably don't see a lot of value in their fork, otherwise they would have made it private, "just in case".

[ekjhgkejhgk]

Explain what you mean by "objectively better"? Your response makes it sound like you don't know the difference and are doing it because everybody else does it. It also makes it sounds like you don't understand the difference between open source software and free software. Both are free licenses, open source is just one part of it.

The main difference is that GPL3 is a copyleft license, whereas MIT is not. Meaning that legally there is nothing in the license preventing a company from taking your code and using it for their purposes without having to contribute to improve the code.

[superstarryeyes]

i know the difference. i use gpl3 in my other project lue for example. i meant objectively better for the open source community. the spread of new ideas benefits from the mit license because the ideas in the code can travel farther.

the reason i picked mit is because rss is in a rough spot right now. the tech isn't mainstream, and big companies are trying to squash it since it doesn't drive engagement like the infinite scroll. anything that helps rss move forward is a win, and the mit license makes that easier.

[ekjhgkejhgk]

Ok thank you for explaining.

> the reason i picked mit is because rss is in a rough spot right now.

I don't think another client is the solution, just saying. There's about three billion of them out there (though I don't dispute that yours might have something unique).