[ranger_danger]

And GNU folks would say the GPL is actually the more open choice because it forces the project to stay open.

Two different ways of thinking about it I guess... it's nice to have choices and I don't think one is more or less "correct", more a matter of opinion/taste I guess.

[gblargg]

It kind of reminds me of the equality of opportunity people versus the equality of outcome people. One sets the starting conditions for developers, the other the ending conditions for users.

[brnt]

Since developers are a subset of users, it's actually possible to calculate which is more open.

[tardedmeme]

You forgot the shareholders, who are not users but have less freedom under the GPL.

[isityettime]

GNU folks would probably not say that.

GNU folks would say that the GPL does more to protect the freedom of end users by guaranteeing their right to access the source code, whereas permissive licenses allow users to receive binaries, the source code corresponding to which is unavailable to them.

I'm not trying to be idly pedantic here, but to emphasize one of things I genuinely admire about the FSF, SFC, etc.: while they do have words, concepts, and terms of art they're attached to, they're actually pretty good at always explicitly tying their positions back to a specific and well-articulated vision of software freedom. They don't usually get caught up in pure terminology ("what is maximally open?", "what is really free?"). They tend to be clear about whose rights they aim to promote and protect and why, and the bigger picture that fits into.

Whether you agree with them or not, I think it's a more defensible position than a shallow terminological squabble.

As someone that is somewhat aligned with those groups, I also want to say this: licenses are just tools for promoting freedom. It's a question of strategy and tactics. All permissively licensed free software is still free software, and the vast majority of it undeniably contributes positively to software freedom on the whole. (The only concrete exceptions I can think of are uses of permissively licensed free software code to implement things like Intel's Management Engine, DRM, maybe some Trusted Computing stuff.) OpenBSD is free software and it's good shit. We should think of licensing questions like this as a friendly dispute among people who have all given generously to support software freedom.

[lelanthran]

> Two different ways of thinking about it I guess

I don't think so; it's two different goals, not two different ways of thinking about it.

The goal of GPL is the interests of users (they can never be locked out of improvements no matter who makes changes).

The goal of BSD is the interests of the developers (A developer can take it, add mods and close of the entire result).

In practice, GPL is pro-user, BSD/MIT is pro-business.

[xorcist]

> In practice, GPL is pro-user, BSD/MIT is pro-business.

Yet every time a GPL licensed product competes against a BSD licensed product in an open market, even when inferior the GPL product wins in the long run.

That's because the GPL ecosystem leapfrogs the BSD one every time one of those pro-business businesses sells proprietary add-ons while the former stands on one another's shoulders.

It's almost like free markets composed of multi vendor ecosystems are business friendly?

(Sarcasm aside, the weasel word here is "business". Customers and vendors are both businesses. Monopolies are very business-friendly for the vendor, just not for anyone else.)

It's a rule that's mostly only true for self-contained products though, it hasn't been true for things like codecs and SSL stacks, and components used by proprietary and free products alike.

[thayne]

I don't think the FSF would say that. They prefer the GPL, because it prevents someone from making a closed derivative, but I haven't seen them ever claim it is more open than "permissive" licenses.

[gilrain]

> more open choice because it forces the project

A true morality must be based on consent, not coercion. Humanity may not be there yet, and therein lies the argument for force (and thus copyleft); but the ultimate goal should always be to reduce its necessity.

[datakan]

It’s not coercion. You’re free to not use it, or alternatively do what these folks did, write your own. Coercion would be forcing people to use it through some mechanism, which clearly isn’t possible with GPL.

[skeledrew]

I see this, and the spiritual example that immediately comes to mind is that which is labeled as "crime". Would it be more moral that a murderer must first consent to being judged and sentenced, or that there is a system which automatically comes into play to hopefully deter but also punish it when it happens?

[jcelerier]

Allowing closed-source to exist is always the less moral choice for many reasons (one example being ecological sustainability)

[kennywinker]

Is this not the paradox of tolerance restated in different terms?

BSD license is unrestricted, it tolerates taking open source and closing it, thus always being at risk of things closing down.

GPL license doesn’t tolerate taking from open source and closing it, thus ensuring things stay open.

[ranger_danger]

The paradox clears itself up if you look at what tolerance actually is. It's simply not interfering with people's agency over themselves. Given that your right to self-agency doesn't entitle you to restrict others' self-agency, behavior that does try restricting others' agency is automatically not included in "tolerance."

[kennywinker]

Sure, yeah - like most “paradoxes”, it’s not actually a paradox unless you only look at it from one specific viewpoint.

[bigstrat2003]

> BSD license is unrestricted, it tolerates taking open source and closing it, thus always being at risk of things closing down.

There is no such risk. If someone wishes to make a closed source derivative of the BSD-licensed original, it does not deprive anyone of the original. That remains there, just as open as before.

[kennywinker]

It deprive us of their improvements, while they get to build off other people’s work.

With the GPL, if you want to modify, and built on others work, you have to share.

Share and share alike, vs take if you like share if you like.

[pjmlp]

It deprives for example the LLVM community to profit from PlayStation compiler optimizations.

[KZerda]

The BSD license is why we have Valkey and not a purely closed-source Redis. It would have been much easier to perform the rugpull if Redis had initially been GPLed.

[badreligion42]

And how exactly did the BSD license make creating Valkey easier? GPL and BSD licenses both have the source in the open. Anyone creating a fork, can easily do so for either BSD or GPL licensed projects. Since Redis is a database, which the user won't be using a binary of, even using a fork of a supposedly GPL-licensed Redis would not require you to share your modifications with your user, same as BSD.

[KZerda]

The BSD license made forking Valkey easier because it ensures that everyone has equal footing. The GPL, especially with contributor license agreements and the like, makes it much more easy for a single party to control the direction of the product. For another example of this happening, look at MongoDB. It started out under the AGPL, but was rugpulled to a non-free license.

[akerl_]

It feels like your actual beef here is with CLAs, which often are designed to allow the current maintainers to relicense.

CLAs are not an attribute of the GPL. They're an agreement that can be applied to contributions to any codebase with any license.

[em-bee]

The BSD license made forking Valkey easier because it ensures that everyone has equal footing

equal footing on the license is what allowed AWS to crush the original creators of the products they host.

it's a trade off.

the AGPL does not prevent a hosting service. it only prevents creating non-free addons. i see no problem with that. see also my other comment

[WD-42]

Mongo was already a centralized project. Technically open source agpl but I don’t remember it having a large developer community or really many contributions from outside mongo. When the rug pull happened I think simply most people didn’t care or moved on to equal (or better) alternatives. It’s not beloved software like Redis is.

[kennywinker]

On top of badreligion42’s point, that both licenses allow forking just as easily - don’t you have the rugpull part backwards?

Afaik BSD licensed stuff can be re-licensed under any more closed licenses at any time, where as to re-license GPL, you need consent from every single contributor.

But i’m not familiar with the redis-valkey story so, maybe there is some nuance i am missing?

[KZerda]

Redis started off as Free Software, but was switched to a source available license in version 7.4. The community promptly forked to Valkey, which is still under the BSD license. Since then, Redis shifted to AGPL 3, with contributor agreements, to try to ensure that they're the only ones who can attempt to commercialize Redis.

[em-bee]

AGPL makes commercializing harder only for people who fear the AGPL because they want to keep stuff for themselves. there is no problem commercializing it if you don't mind sharing all your connected code. the only benefit redis has is that they can integrate non-free code in their hosting service, while the rest of us could not. since it is their work, i think it is reasonable that they have an advantage. it does not reduce my freedom as a user. it only hinders AWS and other big players from crushing redis.

[tardedmeme]

How would you rugpull a GPL Redis?