[VPenkov]

The comparison section says the MIT license is not "free" because it's not copyleft. How come is more permissive considered less free?

[Hasnep]

This seems to be a misunderstanding by the author, a licence doesn't have to be copyleft to be free software. Even the FSF describes the MIT licence as a free software licence (they prefer calling it the Expat licence).

> Expat License (#Expat) > > This is a lax, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL.

https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:Expat

[sublinear]

That's not what it says.

It's a table comparing Olive to Vanilla. In the "feature" column there is a row for "Free Software".

It's not saying one is less free than the other. It's saying what you already know: MIT license is not copyleft.

[HiPhish]

> That's not what it says.

That's exactly what it says. There is a big fat in that row as if Tailwind were not Free Software because it is not Copyleft. If he wanted to point that out he could have used a separate row and written " (not copyleft though)" or something like that.

[echoangle]

But it’s saying that tailwind isn’t free software because it is MIT licensed. Why doesn’t MIT license count as free software?

[stvltvs]

Because it's not Free Software™.

https://www.osweekly.com/free-software-vs-open-source-why-th...

[Hasnep]

You're right, open source and free software are not the same thing, but software licenced under the MIT licence is still free software. Even the FSF describes the MIT licence as a free software licence (see my other reply in this thread).

[sublinear]

Yeah I'm still not following the loaded premise of this question. It's just a table telling people what the project is about.

An MIT-licensed project trying to not scare people away might have the same comparison table in their readme. They'd just flip around the green checkmark and red X.