Show HN: Linenoise NG – GNU Readline Replacement, with UTF8 and Windows (BSD)

Re:Show HN: Linenoise NG – GNU Readline Replacement, with UT... by _ph_ on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @10:49AM (#11110603)

There are a lot of programs, which cannot use GPL for some of its restrictions, e.g. commercial software. But also in general, it is quite restrictive to have to change your softwares license just to use a certain library. Consequently, a lot of non-gpl open source software rather not uses readline than changing their license. I am very happy about any more liberally licensed alternative.

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Re:Show HN: Linenoise NG – GNU Readline Replacement, with UT... by davexunit on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @11:03AM (#11110723)

>There are a lot of programs, which cannot use GPL for some of its restrictions, e.g. commercial software.

You mean proprietary software. People that write free software do not want their work used in software that does not guarantee that users will have the same freedoms that they gave to others. I think the thing that a lot of people overlook here is that the proprietary software developers want to impose their own set of restrictions that are incompatible with free software. Let's not pity the poor company that cannot profit off the work of others without sharing back.

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Re:Show HN: Linenoise NG – GNU Readline Replacement, with UT... by reitanqild on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @01:11PM (#11111849)

> People that write free software do not want their work used in software that does not guarantee that users will have the same freedoms that they gave to others.

Take it easy: there are plenty of people writing free software that don't care about this. antirez answered you somewhere in this thread. Then there is BSD and Apache.

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Re:Show HN: Linenoise NG – GNU Readline Replacement, with UT... by detaro on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @11:37AM (#11111019)

I think everyone here is aware of that, and programmers choosing GPL are free to so.

You are the one that came here and chastised people for not agreeing with your license preferences.

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Re:Show HN: Linenoise NG – GNU Readline Replacement, with UT... by cthalupa on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @05:06PM (#11113497)

Redis is proprietary software? Things licensed under the CDDL?

Let's look at a very easy and very real situation where the (imo) absurd restrictions of the GPL are actively hurting the Linux community:

ZFS on Linux. We have a fully features and powerful logical volume manager and filesystem that you have to jump through hoops to use and cannot be distributed as part of Linux due to license disputes. Software that was originally developed in an entirely proprietary environment that would have never had the source code see the light of day if it was required to use the GPL due to contractual obligations on other pieces of software used.

btrfs, et al, still have not caught up. With a more sane licensing approach, we could have had years of ZoL improving our lives as a default available filesystem/volume manager, and those with idealistic differences strong enough to want a "truly" open version could have been working on btrfs or other alternatives.

You are attempting to paint the world as completely bifurcated, and it just simply isn't the case.

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Re:Show HN: Linenoise NG – GNU Readline Replacement, with UT... by _ph_ on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @11:40AM (#11111056)

As the recent years showed, most companies have no problems "sharing back" modifications of open source products. Some companies (MS, Apple) even open sourced their own developments. The problem is not sharing back. The problem is, that GPL forces the whole program to be open in source and freely shareable between people. Most commercial software cannot exist with such a business model.

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