> Linux is a peculiar beast here. The kernel is largely developed by big corps, but playing by the copyleft rules, because it's such a fundamental infrastructure.
Not quite. linux is the success of the past! but already corrupted by "tainted" kernel...
linux adopted GPL, which was *unthinkable* by corporate back then. But because devs didn't cave in to "permissive license fallacy", they had to eat it up.
The thing is, GPL is severely outdated. It does nothing to force Google, Amazon to open source their code that they profit from because of an OSS base work. GPL, with tainted kernel, merely force them to open source irrelevant parts of Android. The drivers and spyware-DRM can all remain proprietary. And does *absolutely nothing* to their bread and butter, which is hosted services on top of OSS software.
until we stick to GPLv3 like linux stuck with GPL, opensource is point less.
Linux using GPL wasn't such a big problem for the corps, as the Linux developers stated the syscall interface is the GPL boundary. So you can make user space code that runs on Linux without being affected by the GPL (see e.g. the Android "no GPL in userspace" rule). And even inside the kernel, there are loopholes to get around the GPL (e.g. the "tainted" thing you mentioned).
Even if Linux were permissively licensed, the thing preventing splitting up into a zillion proprietary forks would, I think, be the ferocious development speed and lack of internal API guarantees.
> until we stick to GPLv3 like linux stuck with GPL, opensource is point less.
I don't see what GPLv3 would solve here. To close the "service provider loophole" you need the AGPLv3, or even something stronger. But given the more or less total lack of adoption of AGPL, I'm not hopeful here.
I mean, it would be nice if copyleft would be the norm, but that goal seems to be slipping further and further away all the time. To the point that corps can start to shun copyleft code, pressurizing the remaining holdouts to switch to permissive licensed or become irrelevant.
That is fine for creating applications. It still required drivers and other things that expose syscalls to be open and GPLed.
> Even if Linux were permissively licensed,
The tainted kernel was the attack on the GPL itself i talked about. After tainted kernel, it is pretty much NOT-GPL, hence the devs gave in to a more permissive license while still calling it GPL. So the rest of the point is moot. Linux kernel DID adopt a permissive license, which is the reason we do not have proper open source android today.
> But given the more or less total lack of adoption
chicken and egg problem. But that is *exactly* the argument against GPL for the kernel in the past.
Since you bring that up, could you give some good link for reading about it?
To my surprise, despite this controversy being bigger than the systemd one recently, it mostly happened on mailing lists and other non-public forums!
I wonder if anyone collected all that history.
most of the public materials of the time are diatribes by non-coders: https://books.google.com/books?id=GlAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA90&dq=gp...
> linux adopted GPL, which was unthinkable by corporate back then. But because devs didn't cave in to "permissive license fallacy", they had to eat it up.
True, I didn't expand on that to be more concise. Linux is a grandfathered treasure. Though there's an argument the corporations could use BSD like Apple, it's just more beneficial for the fragmented PC/Android ecosystem to maintain Linux sort of like an open ISO standard. Either way, this is not an easy story to replicate, unless something is essential on the level of Linux.
I think with the way the situation develops, more and more people will be questioning permissive licenses as the no-brainer standard. I'm not saying there's no place for them, if you have a good business reason or something. Buy you don't have to unconditionally donate your labor to entities with nation-state-GDP-sized coffers. Copyleft alone won't solve the problems of the industry, but an expansion of its mindshare it would be a start.
I think some of those things from the "golden age" were built by people working on the clock, in salaried full-time positions, at companies that had businesses separate from that open source product, but which used the open source product for that business.
They were getting paid to solve problems and get things done, and if they got it done with open source, that was fine, the company wasn't trying to make money off of the software that solved the problem.
(Also by university faculty getting paid by the university).
I do think this is the answer. Try to use LGPL, GPL or AGPL as appropriate.
I also agree with some people that there's an issue with framing the question as defending the right of developers to get paid for open source. This was never much of a thing by default. People have been trying to build FOSS companies, with varying success. But I would guess most end user-facing things, like GNU, Linux, VLC etc. were built by academics or hobbyists, or foundations. Commercial FOSS tries to sell infrastructure to enterprises. It's not things you and I would use if we weren't IT professionals.
(Linux is a peculiar beast here. The kernel is largely developed by big corps, but playing by the copyleft rules, because it's such a fundamental infrastructure. Big distros like Ubuntu and Fedora are the middle ground where they can be freely used by individual people, but are a side effect of Canonical and Red Hat's development processes.)
The correct framing of FOSS is benefit of the users and the society at large. We use .?GPL to ensure that the software that people use is inspectable, and modifiable if the vendor does something bad. Thus we serve people's, and our own, interests in the long term. We reduce the area where companies can damage the public for profit, when hiding behind closed source, unchangeable dark patterns, "hai we ban you there is no appeals" etc. etc. That the essential software can be had free of charge in practice is also a nice thing... to some extent.
The answer to the problem of compensating the developers was never much directly solved by FOSS. (Of course, you can try to use it to also get hired, to sell hosting or support.) This is a social/political/economic problem. Trying to solve it with licensing (a.k.a. copyright law hacking) is and understandable effort, but very likely a dead end.
EDIT: I see under the sibling comments that the OP is more specifically concerned about the fundamental and "invisible" projects like sudo. I can't add much on that, but I do think there's value in getting (some) signaling and (some) bargaining power by choosing copyleft. Especially if there would be solidarity and consensus among developers in doing this.