News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hack... by bigstrat2003 on Friday September 29, 2023 @12:35PM (#37706662)
No, that's not what it is about. I certainly don't choose permissive licenses based on how RMS behaves (that would be stupid), but I also don't choose them because I think businesses shouldn't give back. I choose permissive licenses because I believe that the GPL is hypocritical in claiming to be about freedom, yet placing limits on the freedom of those who use the code. I believe that freedom must include the freedom to do even those things I disagree with personally.

You probably don't think that's a worthwhile ideal, and fine. I'm not here to convince you of my ideals. But your assertion as to the reason behind the increasing prominence of permissive licenses is overly reductive and not true.

Re:Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hack... by johnnyanmac on Friday September 29, 2023 @01:03PM (#37707070)
>I believe that freedom must include the freedom to do even those things I disagree with personally.

In an ideal world sure. But I'm guessing Stallman made this license precisely so people can't "do whatever they want", which from a business standpoint is taking that code, modifying it in-house, and closing it off. Prevent a tragedy of the commons, so to speak.

Stallman didn't approach this as some idealist of "we make great code and everyone will share and progress society". Partly because tbf: open source was a lot harder to doiin his time. He came from an angle of trying to combat proprietary software. That's why he didn't make the MIT license (even if it preceded him, I'm not sure).

Re:Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hack... by bigstrat2003 on Friday September 29, 2023 @01:22PM (#37707398)
I realize all that. I disagree with it (or else I would be using the GPL), but that really wasn't my point. My point is that there exist people who use permissive licenses because it fits their ideals better, not because they are corporations trying to capture profit.
Re:Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hack... by johnnyanmac on Friday September 29, 2023 @02:24PM (#37708229)
Sure, but Stallman was focusing on corporations. A small project isn't going to be modifying much of a GPL library to begin with, so it's less work to document their changes. So GPL wouldn't be as hostile to a small project as a corporation.
Re:Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hack... by toyg on Friday September 29, 2023 @01:30PM (#37707521)
> your assertion as to the reason behind the increasing prominence of permissive licenses is overly reductive

Possibly. The push to use MIT/BSD from businesses, however, is very much real. To mention one, Apple methodically purged their OS of pretty much anything GPL. Most businesses involved in opensource insist that everything should be MIT/BSD, and absolutely nothing should even smell of GPL. They certainly don't do it because of philosophical differences.