I ask this because I think of the recent switch of Ubuntu to the Rust recode of the GNU core utils, which use an MIT license. There are many Rust recodes of GPL software that re-license it as a pushover MIT or Apache licenses. I worry these relicensing efforts this will significantly harm the FOSS ecosystem. Is this reason to start worrying or is it not that bad?
IMO, if the FOSS world makes something public, with extensive liberties, then the only thing that should be asked in return is that people preserve these liberties, like the GPL successfully enforces. These pushover licenses preserve nothing.
One side community wants total GPL take over and one side they don’t support total GPLv3 licenced Operating system like
Let’s see how this goes then revisit the question.
The switch to permissive licensing is terrible for end-user software freedom given that corporations like Apple and Sony have leeched off of FreeBSD in the past to make their proprietary locked-down OSes that took over the market. Not sure what would happen if RedoxOS became usable in production, but if it turns out to function better than Linux enough to motivate corporations to shift their focus to it, open source versions for servers would probably still exist, but hardware compatibility on end-user devices would be at higher risk than before as vendors switch their support and stop open sourcing stuff. Or they keep focusing on Linux for server stuff due to the GPL license and the fact that their infrastructure is already on it.
I’m going to continue releasing my software with a license that I deem appropriate.
For things I’m building only for myself or that I have no interest in building a community around, I couldn’t give a shit what people do with it or if they contribute back. My efforts have nothing to do with them. I’m releasing it for the remote chance someone finds it useful, either commercially or personally. Partially because I’ve benefited from others doing the same thing.
I’m not anti-copyleft, but the only time I actually care to use something like the GPL is for projects that would be obviously beneficial to have community contributions. Things that require more effort than I can put in, or that needs diverse points of views.
I use permissive licenses not because I’m a pushover, but because I really don’t care what you do with it.
To quote Brian Lunduke, because the GPL is viral and functioning systems licensed under the GPL have been published, if a future Rust-based MIT version of Linux ever comes out, we can just “Fork it, then we’ll have our own Linux.”
To paraphrase Brian Lunduke: This software has gone woke! That software has gone woke! Boo woke software!
That’s good point.
Another thing that is dangerous are CLAs or “contributor license agreements”, like Google uses. Technically, it is GPL, but Google might demand to hold all the copyright, so as the copyright holder it can change the license at a whim.
like the GPL successfully enforces
I’m not aware of the GPL being legally tested to where you can claim that; there are a lot of open questions, and it has failed to protect works from AI companies, for example.
I’m not aware of the GPL being legally tested
https://fsfe.org/activities/avm-gpl-violation/avm-gpl-violation.en.html
In context of the many failures, I don’t think this establishes anything.
Coreutils has little commercial value to take can create a proprietary fork of. There is little value that can be added to it to make it worthwhile. The same is for sudo - which has had a permissive licence from the start. In all that time no one has cared enough to fork it for profit.
Not saying that is true of every project. But at the same time even GPL software has issues with large companies profiting off it and not contributing back. Since unless you are distributing binaries the GPL does not force you to do anything really. See mongodb and their move to even more restrictive licences.
The GPL is not the only thing that stops companies from taking open software. Nor does it fully protect against that.
Not does everything need to be GPL. It makes sense for some projects and less sense for others. Especially libraries as that basically forces no company from using them for anything. Which is also not what you want from a library.
Compare Ubuntu and MacOS. MacOS ships ancient version of Bash because its GPL2 which allows for coexistence with proprietary software on sold machines.
So if Ubuntu gets rid of GNU coreutils and sudo what else stays GPL3 on a barebones system? You can swap Bash with Zsh like Apple did. And just like that you got yourself a corpo friendly distro to ship proprietary software. Just like Android, and look where that got us.
sudo is not GPL3. It is not even GPL2. It is an old license that is just as permissive as the MIT license. It has never had any big problems with that being the case. I don’t think that coreutils being GPL has really done anything to force companies to contribute back to it. It is mostly fixed in its function and does not really have much room for companies taking and modifying it to a point where others will favor the closed version over the open on. And what it provides is fairly trivial functions overall that if someone did want to take part of it then it is not terribly hard to rewrite it from scratch.
GNU Coreutils is not the only implementation of those POSIX features - just the most popular one. FreeBSD has its own, there is busybox, the rust ports and loads of other rewrites of the same functionality to various degrees. None of that really matters though as they dont really add much if any value to what coreutils provides as there is just not that much more value to add to these utilities now.
And it is not like the GPL license of coreutils affects other binaries on the system. So if you dont need to modify it and it does not infect other things there is little point in trying to take it over or use an alternative.
MacOS does not use a later version because they cannot. But also they don’t care enough to even try to maintain their own.
GPL is important on other larger/more complex bits of software. But on coreutils/sudo IMO it does not matter nearly as much as people think it does.
GPLv2 vs GPLv3 matters. At least to corpos. You can’t just brush this away when they have a clear position on this.
I was not trying to brush away the differences for GPL 2 vs 3. My point was just that I don’t think a more permissive license on Coreutils would have caused every company to want to steal the code, get everyone using it and force out the GPLed version. But a more restrictive license (say one that infects other binaries on the system) would have meant fewer companies using it and thus fewer distros and everyone else using it.
But for other projects the balance is different and a more permissive license would cause issues. There are some projects that even the GPLv2 or even v3 is too permissive for.
Yes.
Anyone who cares about user freedoms is not choosing a permissive licence.
The problem is developers only caring about themselves and other developers.
When I talk to devs I know who like FOSS, they are always focussed on their needs as a dev when it comes to licences. The real concern was, and always should be, for the software user’s freedoms.
God forbid developers earning something for their work
Developers should absolutely get paid for their work, but as @mina86@lemmy.wtf said, that is is a different issue. There are plenty of companies that employ developers of FOSS code, both copyleft and permissive licence.
I like non-copyleft licenses for one reason. Imagine if ffmpeg devs were like:
so many security vulnerabilities, your free labor is bad
thanks for pointing that out, it’s not longer free
Most devs (including me) want to have some control over what they made. Permissive licenses allow rugpulling project if someone is using it while making YOU do stuff. ffmpeg is a great example. You may not like it but that’s how it is.
I’m not sure I’m following. The owners of the code can re-license anytime they want, and even dual-license or license on a case-by-case basis. Would require a contributor license agreement to be practical though, and it looks like ffmpeg may not have one.
How does permissive licensing lead to corporate takeover? Companies can do proprietary forks of permissively licensed foss projects, but they can’t automatically take over the upstream.
Permissive licensing can create what is effectively “software tivoization” (the restriction or dirty interpretation of distribution and modification rights of software by the inclusion of differently-licensed components).
The Bitwarden case is a good example of how much damage can be done to a brand with merely the perception of restrictive licensing. obviously, bitwarden has clarified the mess, but not before it was being called ‘proprietary’ by the whole oss community.
So I don’t think op is referring to direct corporate takeover, but damage caused by corporate abuse of a fork.
You’re taking an incredibly slanted position. There is a whole world of vibrant, viable, meaningful FOSS outside copyleft licenses. Even when one philosophically and politically prefers copyleft licenses, sometimes there are cases where the humanitarian or practical argument favours permissive licensing. But there are many who simply don’t share your interpretation of the philosophy and politics.
Also on that topic, very interesting read:
Why are they pushover licenses? Because they don’t force people to contribute back? Because a lot of companies aren’t doing that for GPL licensed software either.
Also not really sure how this would allow a takeover, because control of the project is not related to the license.
It’s not so much about forcing to contribute, but rather keeping companies from selling commercial forks/having checks against profiting from work that happens to be freely available.
I’m thinking of the Apache project, and all the important projects it covers that are under an Apache license and I’m not sure where the sudden worry comes from.
HTTPD and Nginx have had very permissive licensing for years and seem to do fine.
You can profit from GPL software. The only restriction is if you distribute it you also need to distribute modifications under the GPL.
GPL also does nothing for software as a service since it is never distributed.
GPL even explicitly allows selling GPL software. This is effectively what redhat do. They just need to distribute the source to those that they sell it to.
The GPL doesn’t force to contribute. But if you make changes to it, you need to have these changes reflect the liberties you yourself received. Megacorporations use the so-called “Explore, Expand, Exterminate” model, the GPL stops this from happening.
You can just wrap the software in a binary and interact with the binary and you will likely elude the GPL terms. This is kinda grey area but it would be hard to win against it in court. (I am not a lawyer)
I mean that broadly because nobody will make proprietary Coreutils or sudo as someone already pointed out.
Removed by mod
You’re the only user catching downvotes
Check the rest of the thread 🤣
People in here don’t work in the space, and are clearly not knowledgeable about the subject. They can downvote me all they want.
I did, twice