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What’s your ultimate unpopular opinion? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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[–] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

MIT and BSD software licenses might as well be renamed to “I love big daddy companies and trust them 100% uwu”

There is no reason not to choose GPL/AGPL/MPL 2.0/LGPL/SSPL if you are writing open source code.

MIT and BSD just let companies enrich themselves at societies expense.

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  • [+] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Pull requests have nothing to do with any of this. Also algorithms can’t be copyrighted nor patterned in the first place so it would not matter.

    You could implant an algorithm in a proprietary code base and some gal could reverse engineer it and publish it as GPL or MIT or whatever and all would be a-ok.

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  • [+] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago*

    In terms of algorithms, nothing. But you were the one who mentioned algorithms. I am speaking of code in general. I do want for persons to contribute back to the community if they use community sourced code. I don’t think we can trust corporations to be altruistic.

    This all being said in your earlier message you were implying it’s all about ego. I was just saying it is not about ego.

    For me it’s all about community resources and societal enrichment.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    That is a quite popular opinion judging by the votes. I think they function quite differently, and are useful for different things, which might be more unpopular.

    BSD and MIT are more like "public domain" or "creative commons" licenses. Some people genuinely just don't care and want literally anyone to use their work.

    Libraries, languages, APIs, OS's, etc... Work well because they have mass adoption. They have mass adoption (often) because people get the freedom to use them during their paid time. Companies are exploitative and evil, but often their dev and engineer employees aren't.

    Copy left licenses (GPL, AGPL, CERN-OHL-S to not forget about open source hardware) really shine for end products like hardware, applications, hosted software, games, etc.... Where you want to preserve a "unique" end product against theft, exploitation, and commercialization, and really care about having not everyone be able to do whatever they want.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    What's the main difference between those licenses?

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Sure. Very briefly. These are all open source licenses which (roughly) means the source is freely viewable and changeable. But the specific differences are:

    • MIT/BSD - Anyone can take the code and do whatever they want, if they start with your code, improve it then make it proprietary there is nothing you can do.

    • GPL - If someone makes changes to your code and improves it they have to make it available for use by the community too IF and only if they distribute the binary.

    • AGPL - Like GPL except that even if they are running the code on their server and not sharing it they still have to give back improvements.

    • MPL 2.0 - Like GPL but limited to specific files. This is useful for things like statically linked code. I don’t often recommend this but it can be needed for static only code bases like rust. Proprietary software can link with this and not be covered by the copyleft share alike stuff.

    • LGPL - Like the GPL but for dynamically linked libraries. Proprietary software can link with this and not be covered by the copyleft share alike stuff.

    • SSPL - Like AGPL but technically even more intense. If you use SSPL you must open source all the tooling you use to manage that hosted SSPL license. Any tools to make sure the SSPL software is running well or to set it up must also be open sourced.

    The OSI technically does not say the SSPL is “open source” but given that they recently admitted that they regret defining the AGPL as open source I think the OSI might be showing a bit of corporate bias.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    I managed and maintained a known open-source project. GPL license.

    4 guys in SKorea submitted patches back as required, which their company claimed was corporate espionage -- because they intended to violate the license?

    Someone from the FSF took their case, but was unsuccessful. 4 guys went to prison because of them adhering to my license. Prison!

    I've done BSD ever since. I can't prevent companies from being right sociopaths, but I can keep well-meaning and honest people out of prison.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Wait, so because a few execs violated the GPL and threw their employees under the bus, we should abandon copyleft entirely? That’s like ditching locks just because burglars exist. Companies that want to exploit software will do so, BSD or not. The GPL didn’t land those four guys in prison; their higher-ups did. Giving up and saying “ok big corp I’ll just do what you want“ just makes it even easier for corporations to profit at societies expense.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That really sucks, but it does seem like just giving this company the win. I imagine it didn't break those guys out of jail either. Regardless, do you have an article or something on this subject? I've never heard of such a case but I'm interested!

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Can't do it without doxxing myself.

    I don't need validation of the facts. I'm just saying why I cannot go with an encumbered license for any new stuff. I can't put others in that kind of risk.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    I don't know, thinking more about it, I frankly don't understand both why on earth you would feel responsible for this, and why do you think that this would ultimately be a lesser harm. It really sounds to me like you are not putting anyone at risk and ALSO that this change of license wouldn't actually help anyone.

    I even understand the argument that copyleft might be detrimental to some projects because of big for-profits contributions, but this reads like a cop-out "for free". I would understand a change of license to protect your own ass (without advocating for others to do the same), but this is saying "I don't do copyleft because someone, somewhere, might be hurt by an abusive corporation or state for reasons vaguely related to my choice of license".

    By this logic, knowing that your project benefits the interests of those who jailed innocent workers, shouldn't you just take your project offline altogether? Aren't you worried that you're actually taking agency away from both those workers AND from people trying to offer an alternative to those clearly evil corporations?

    I'm sorry it's not even your decision that's driving me a bit nuts, it's your work and you license it however the fuck you want, it's the logic behind it.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    Of course it's your right to choose, but I'm not convinced that's a good enough reason. The well-meaning and honest people can make their own judgements about their employer and decide whether or not to include GPL code. Even if you change your license there will still be GPL code out there and corporations don't need any more handouts.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    @mholiv yes. Literally the reason why I use MIT licenses in my software. It's possible for real people (same as me) doing real work to use my software legally and I don't care if they hide their patches from me. I don't really care about them at all - I just supply software as it is.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Then why not LGPL or MPL 2.0? They could use your code as is too. I’ve worked in major tech companies and they are ok with these. They just don’t like GPL for obvious reasons.

    Obviously too is that you have the right to choose how to license your code, but I don’t think it makes sense to use MIT when LGPL and MPL 2.0:

    1. Exist
    2. Are accepted by tech corps for internal use.

    If you don’t believe me look at your corps license inclusion policy.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    @mholiv tried to look at MPL 2.0. Too long, didn't read, lol. Maybe later I'll look at it closely.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    @mholiv@lemmy.world It's common misconception that copyleft licences stop rich companies stealing open source.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I mean you can’t steal open source code if you tried. The code is too respectful of your freedoms. I don’t think anyone is arguing against you here.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    @mholiv@lemmy.world So there's no reason not to use non-copyleft licences like BSD or MIT.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    If “theft” is your only concern yes. It’s a common misconception that copyleft licenses stops rich companies from stealing. It does not.

    I am more concerned about societal enrichment vs corporate enrichment.

    If you release some code under MIT that a company finds useful, they could take it, improve it a bit, and resell it back to the community. This enriches the company at the expense of the community. Without the original code the company could have never taken it as a basis to sell and the community that wrote the code gets nothing.

    If you release that same code as AGPL the company can take it, improve it and sell it to the community. BUT the difference is that the community now benefits from those improvements too. Maybe more improvements happen. Maybe a second company takes those improvements and sells them too. The community would have all the improvements and would benefit from greater competition.

    With copy left licenses. The community is enriched and companies are enriched.

    With MIT style licenses. Companies are enriched at the expense of the community.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    @mholiv@lemmy.world It looks you believe that magic letters G, P and L make company release their improvements to the public. Actually they do the same with MIT and GPL code: include it into closed source products and that is. Because there's no way for you to check if there was GPL in closed source program.

    But the GPL style licences bring licence compatibility issues while MIT style do not. (And that's why Linux cannot include ZFS driver despite it's being "GPL style" licenced)

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Ask Cisco how they feel about it. There is a precedence of companies using copy left licensed software and the community benefiting from it.

    If companies are just going to be blatantly criminal and violate software licenses they were going to do that anyways. I’m not sure how much experience you have working in or with mega corps but the ones I have worked with in the past HATE the idea of opening themselves up to being so blatantly liable.

    When I worked in big tech we had a license scanner that checked the libraries we were using. Anything strongly copyleft would be flagged and we would be contacted by legal.

    You might have experienced working with companies that act otherwise. I encourage you to call them out, maybe work with the FSF to get another Cisco style ruling.

    Funny you mention ZFS though. It’s not the GPL that was the issue. It is CDDL that’s incompatible. GPL is generally comparable with foss licenses. MIT, MPL, Apache, BSD all are comparable. It’s just CDDL that’s incompatible with copyleft in general.

    If you think the community will benefit more from MIT licensed software than copyleft I think you need to look harder at the modern corporate world. Corporations are not altruistic.

    This being said I’m not sure there is much more to be said here. You’ve gone to saying I believe in magic and that there are corporate GPL conspiracies. I just don’t see the proof and I think there is not much more to be gained by such talk.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago

    @mholiv@lemmy.world Going criminal is not a goal in itself. I think you know, corporations exist for profit. If violating a licence gains profit they'll do it. You know companies doing open source? I know too. Why do they do it? Because of GPL? No, they do because they profit from it. (And they like how copyleft licences restrict others from benefiting).

    You see problem with CDDL? Problem would be any other copyleft licence. No copyleft licence is compatible with GPL (except they include special exception), neither CDDL, nor GFDL (despite GNU in its name), nor any other. Funny you mention MIT, MPL, Apache and BSD in this list, because they're all permissive that are compatible to both GPL and CDDL. It is not CDDL, but copyleft making these licences incompatible. I mentioned CDDL specifically because it is an iconic example how copyleft (allows a company to) hurt open source.

    You're speaking about "conspiracies", and ask me for proofs. But what proofs do you need? That companies violate licences? There are known cases of open source licence litigations. Actually problem is deeper, not that companies violate licences, but that there's no effective way to enforce such licences (without totalitarism).

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