Love the MIT license. If this were further along we could use this as the foundation of our business without having to "give back" device drivers and other things.
This should be the sort of red flag to take note of. There’s an LLVM fork for every esoteric architecture now and this sort of thinking will lead to never being able to run your own software on your own hardware again. A reversion to the dark ages of computing.
Linux magically solves this problem how? GPL isn't magic. It doesn't compel contributing upstream. And half of modern driver stacks live in userspace anyways.
There are also so many G.P.L. violations and nothing is done about it.
I think a big issue is also that it's hard to show actual damages with this kind of copyright violation. It's obviously copyright violation but what damages are there really? Also, there are so many dubious cases where it's not clear whether it is a violation or not.
Software Freedom Conservancy have been doing GPL compliance actions for a long time, especially if you consider their staff's previous lawsuit that resulted in OpenWRT existing. Also the more recent Vizio lawsuit is kinda interesting, it aims to enable any recipient of GPLed binaries to sue for GPL compliance.
> And half of modern driver stacks live in userspace anyways
??? I haven't touched hardware whose driver lives in userspace since 2017 and it was a DMX512 controller of a shitty brand
Infineon tricore compiler from hightec. Compilers are actually, IMO, one of the things that are the most easy to have GPL because you can use it internally however you want without releasing the source outside. You could build whatever you want and you don't have to ship it on the final HW. A kernel does not afford you such a thing, you MUST ship it with your product.
Thanks for the example! Your opinion here aligns with mine: GCC's GPL status has manifestly not been an issue for vendors in the past. I think the reason for vendors selecting LLVM has much more to do with the fact that LLVM is easier to develop on than GCC.
Seriously: stop it. It's none of your business what the author's license choice is. You don't know what the author is trying to accomplish by their choice of license. It could be a mindless choice, or it could be an informed choice. Perhaps the author wants to build interest and later plans to switch licenses (it's not like others are likely to fork _and_ do an excellent job of evolving and maintaining the fork). Perhaps the author is looking to get hired. Perhaps the author believes that BSD/MIT licensing is more free than the GPL. You really don't need to be shaming the author for not making the choice you made.
MIT licensed code is a gift. A gift indeed doesn't require the recipient to give back anything related to the gift.
A "gift" requiring GPL-like conditions isn't really a gift in the common sense. It's more like a contractual agreement with something provided and specific, non-negotiable obligations. They're giving while also asserting control over others' lives, hoping for a specific outcome. That's not just a gift.
People doing MIT license are often generous enough where the code is a gift to everyone. They don't try to control their lives or societal outcomes with extra obligations. They're just giving. So, I'm grateful to them for both OSS and business adaptations of their gifts.
While the FSF's vision for the GPL is clear, the GPL itself is not so powerful that it is more than a "gift" that has some terms if you want to do certain things you are not obligated to do. It is like a grant that enforces some reasonable conditions so the money isn't just misappropriated. I wouldn't give that to a friend for their birthday, but I think it's reasonable that powerful organizations should not be free to do whatever they want. Not that the GPL is perfect for that use, but it's good.
> It's more like a contractual agreement with something provided and specific, non-negotiable obligations.
The obligation is not to the author of the code, it is to the public. MIT-style licenses are gifts to people and companies who produce code and software, copyleft licenses are gifts to the public.
I don't give a shit about the happiness of programmers any more than the happiness of garbage collectors, sorry. I don't care more that you have access to the library you want to use at your job writing software for phones than I care that somebody has access to the code on their own phone. You're free to care about what you want, but the pretense at moral superiority is incoherent.
It is non-negotiable. GPL is basically proprietary software. It's owned by the public, and all of the work that you do using it belongs to the public. If you steal it, you should be sued into the ground.
I get what your saying but I think it’s not the best way to describe it - “GPL is property”? Hardly - it’s a societal common good that can be used by anyone interested in helping that common good.
Are parks “proprietary”? I can’t run my car dealership from one, so it’s …proprietary? No. So using the terminology of “proprietary” doesn’t do justice to what it actually is.
The phrasing is a little awkward but I like the sentiment: gpl software is owned by the public/humanity/the commons/etc in the same way something like the grand canyon should be.
A gift is when you do something without expecting anything in return, esp compensation.
If I use GPL'd code, I have to keep releasing my modifications for free because it's mandated. I have to do that even if I do 1000 hours of labor but they gave me 30 min of it. So, it's also near-infinite work required in return for finite work they did. And I have to bind others to this with my own work.
That's not someone giving me a gift. I'm not sure what to call that except a collective work with permanent obligations for all parties. It's more like a job or corporate charter or something. I like another person's claim that it's creating property with requirements for those using it (which copyright certainly does).
> If I use GPL'd code, I have to keep releasing my modifications for free because it's mandated.
Pedantically, only recipients of your updated binary are owed updated source, so if you're not distributing that binary to the whole world, you're not required to release updated source to the whole world. Kind of a nitpick, but maybe not.
If you intend to spend 1000 hours extending a gpl project someone put 30 minutes into, and you wouldn't have wanted to use GPL, perhaps don't use that project as a base? Spend 1000.5 hours and pick whatever license you like
The point of copyleft is that the author wants the code to remain available to the public, not to give it as a gift to whoever wants to build their own closed source system
MIT is throwing a free party where food and drinks are paid for, and copyleft is where food is paid for but you BYOB. Both are fine, so what's the problem?
That's my question. Why is this thread full of license choice flamewar? Do we have nothing of substance to contribute?
Here, I'll make a substantive contribution. I hope this succeeds and causes a lowest-common denominator Linux ABI to exist that user-land can target, thus freeing us all from the Linux kernel as the only viable option. Solaris/Illumos, the BSDs, and even Windows have all gone through one or two phases of attempting Linux ABI compatibility, ultimately giving up because the Linux ABI is such a fast-moving and underdocumented target.
Someone implied that people were evil if they gave away software with nothing asked in return. I didn't think the author deserved that. I'm also starting to think such people are at war with both private property and generosity for political reasons leaning toward socialism or communism. That segment also tries to pressure others to adopt their ideas.
So, I defended the author and the concept of generosity. I also tried to help FOSS people reframe what their doing as collective property or work so everyone understands the tradeoffs better. They confuse people by advocating for "free" or "freedom" with licenses that take away freedoms from authors. It's like they're redefining words to have non-standard meanings but get angry when people act on standard morals or word usages.
I'm also starting to think the confusion was intentional because many of their arguments look like socialism or communism disguised as software advice. We also see the same failure modes across most projects and products. Like communist nations (eg Shenzhen), we see the GPL projects succeed best when they relied on capitalists instead of communist principles for code contributions. So, I'll eventually look to see if people like Stallman were communist and if this was sneaky, ideological warfare or subversion. Like we see with critical theory ("woke") proponents constantly repacking their ideas (eg DEI, Codes of Conduct) to snesk them in where they'd be rejected after peer review. I feel like so much fighting online started with people doing something evil built on a conflict-oriented philosophy (Marxism/Communism) that causes the same destructive effects everywhere people promoted it.
There is a huge distinction between socialism/communism and Free Software.
1) the marginal cost of software is zero.
2) some software is becoming more like infrastructure that everyone uses.
In the physical world, some infrastructure is privatized, some is regulated, and some is provided by the government. But going back to point 1 we see that privatization makes even less sense (to society) with software.
I agree, and even if a company doesn't give back, they further the popularity and sustainability of the project. Isn't Python an MIT-like license (PSFL)? As well as React and Godot? And Tensorflow is also permissive with Apache 2.0, corrrect?
A gift where the recipient can remove the freedoms that they've been enjoying themselves is a bad deal for ensuring those freedoms are available to everyone. A permissive license is a terrible idea for a F/LOSS kernel.
This is the paradox of tolerance, essentially.
Also, seeing F/LOSS as a "gift" is an awful way of looking at it.
They can't remove it. They gave it to you. They just don't have to keep giving you more stuff. Many people think they're owed more software, including fixes to software, without compensating the laborer. That worldview is the real problem.
So, we have a variety of licensing styles that meet various goals. People can pick what suits their needs and wants. That's a good thing.
> They can't remove it. They gave it to you. They just don't have to keep giving you more stuff.
Who is "they" in this context?
A permissive license allows anyone to take someone else's work, profit from it, and never contribute back to the original project. For someone advocating for fairness, it's remarkable how you ignore this very real and common scenario.
> Many people think they're owed more software, including fixes to software, without compensating the laborer. That worldview is the real problem.
Compensation is orthogonal to F/LOSS. Authors are free to choose whatever income streams they like, and many successful businesses have been built around F/LOSS. Whoever is expecting people to work without compensation is being unreasonable, of course.
But F/LOSS as a social movement goes beyond a mere financial transaction. It works on the basis of mutual trust, where if I share something you find valuable, then the acceptable "payment" for that work is for you to do the same. This collaborative effort is how the highest quality products are produced.
The irony of your point is that a permissive license allows precisely the scenario you're arguing against. We've seen corporations profit from the work of others without compensating them for it. So much so, that OSS projects are forced to roll back their permissive licenses, often going too far in the other direction, to where they can no longer be labeled as "Open Source". E.g. Elastic: Apache -> SSPL -> AGPL; Redis: BSD -> SSPL; HashiCorp: MPL -> BSL; etc.
That is the actual problem which copyleft licenses prevent.
Not giving anything back is fair because the author's license specifically allows them to do that. A gift has no expectation of anything in return. God blesses such generosity because it's a a truly, selfless act.
re compensation
Compensation is not orthogonal to FLOSS. Copyright was mainly designed to ensure work couldn't be shared without paying the author. Anything given for free dramatically decreases the chance of getting paid. OSS and FLOSS almost guarantee no money is made on standalone software but GPL with CLA's allows dual licensing to recover some.
If anyone uses permissive licenses, it's a gift where they're not (in legal terms) expecting money. Some try to sell it or ask for donations, too, which is incompatible with the license. The free license usually undermines that. It works for some people to some degree, though.
Re roll backs
I didn't argue against any scenario. The original person I replied to appeared to be arguing that it was evil to give software away with no obligations. I had to explain what a gift is and why it's morally good to give. I believe the reason is years of people promoting FOSS politics which I now see are rooted in ideas similar to socialism or communism. It wouldn't surprise me if Stallman was a closet communist and just repackaged those ideas into software licensing.
(Note: I feel like I'm going to have to think more on that political angle given I've been influenced by such people for years on these sites. I'll do a fresh take at some point.)
On companies being unsustainable, I've already explained what happened. Their goal included selfish gain (money/contributions) from selfish entities who normally take but don't give. Their goal was also to build, individually or collectively, a shared work. They used a license that said it's a one-time gift with no obligations. So, entities took the gift and felt no obligations to return anything. Surprise!
Now, they've changed to licenses that suit their commercial and/or property goals. That may or may not work for them. Whereas, the companies successfully marketing proprietary software are able to build it up to their hearts' content. Some companies give out the source or dual license under GPL/AGPL. They should probably do Parity License to close remaining gaps and see if FOSS people are really about the free commons.
License Zero and Polyform have new licenses to help. I conceptualized some in the past that allow modifications, forks, etc so long as the customer keeps paying. Then, redistribution among paying customers. I'd like to see more models for people aiming for sustainability with software freedoms baked in.
>> Many people think they're owed more software, including fixes to software, without compensating the laborer. That worldview is the real problem.
Many people (corporations) think they're owed more money beyond the labor. This is why SaaS is a major business model these days. The marginal cost of software is zero, and yet people expect to keep getting paid for it over and over.
Using the legal system to force other people to do what you want and perpetually isn't freedom: it's controlling others by force to make them live the way you want them to. You're taking away their personal freedoms, like sharing or not sharing their work, to promote or force compliance with a goal of yours. Again, that's control, not freedom.
Would you want people controling your property based on their current and future desires? And dictating what you do with your property enhancements? Would you call that giving you more freedom? Or denying you freedom to force you to support their goals for your property?
It's stupid to discuss this in the abstract because what you want to do with your property is very relevant. If you want to paint your fence a weird color and that's what's being prohibited by law is different is totally different from if you want to build a heavy polluting chemical processing factory or a poorly run slaughter house with animals squealing at all hours of the day.
No, but if someone takes the free food and builds a business by selling it to others, without giving anything back to the original places, it harms everyone other than the person doing that.
F/LOSS is not a charity or a gift, so your analogy is not appropriate. It is a social movement and philosophy with the goal of sharing knowledge and building software for the benefit of everyone. It invites collaboration, and fosters a community of like-minded people. Trust is an implicit requirement for this to succeed, and individuals and corporations who abuse it by taking the work of others and not giving anything back are harmful to these goals. Copyleft licenses exist precisely to prevent this from happening.
MIT is a fine license for many projects, but not for an operating system kernel.
This feels eerily close to having someone try to convince me to be join their religion. You don't need to force your opinions into others. Let them choose. If folks agree then the license will hold them back in terms of building a community. There are plenty of great open source kernels that don't use GPL, including freebsd. I think most embedded os kernels are not gpl (zephyr, freertos, etc). I would argue that Linux does well in spite of its license not because of it.
Just as people who strongly prefer permissive licenses deny copyleft licenses, this is the same in reverse. If you don't want to touch GPL projects, then don't.
Im not trying to suggest non gpl licenses are superior and folks writing kernels with gpl are making a mistake. On the contrary I'm advocating that both are fine options and you shouldn't make people feel bad for choosing to not use gpl. There is a difference here and it matters greatly. Most people will not care for the differences between the two and the ones that do will choose the one that aligns with their values. If I'm even a hint of anti gpl, it's due to zealotry of it's supporters.
I think a lot of the backlash for the GPL is unreasonable, and not really better than a lot of the backlash for permissive licenses, and furthermore I believe there are reasonable ideological opinions to prefer one or the other (though ideology isn't an excuse to be mean). But I concede that the person you responded to set a poor standard of discussion.
>> I take this as an oblique critique of TFA's choice of license. What's it to you? Why must we all use the GPL always in order to satisfy busybodies?
Thank you for reading it correctly. I originally had a </sarcasm> to make sure nobody thought I liked the license choice. What's it to me? Well someone posted it to HN here so we could comment on it, so I did.
I think the MIT license has its place, but IMHO it does not belong on an OS like that. Reason is indicated in my original comment.
