linuxmemes

Sometimes there's a benefit in getting open source code into proprietary software. Think libraries implementing interoperability APIs, communication protocols, file formats, etc

That's what permissive licenses are for.

If some company wants to keep their code closed and they have a choice between something interoperable or something proprietary that they will subsequently promote, and the licence is the only thing stopping them from going for the open source approach, that's worse.

Completely agree that a good breadth of everything else is suited to copyleft licensing though

This seems like complaining that the BSD license does exactly what it intends to do.

Someone biulds a thing and puts it on the curb in front of his house with a sign:

I had fun building this and learnt a lot. Do with it whatever you want.  

Then someone else comes along, takes it, and sells it.
I fail to see how the inventor was taken advantage of. They presumably thought about which license they want to use and specifically chose this one.

I feel like most people base their decision on license purely on anecdotes of a handful of cases where the outcome was not how they would have wanted it. Yet, most people will never be in that spot, because they don't have anything that anyone would want to consume.

If I had produced something of value I want to protect, I wouldn't make it open in the first place. Every piece of your code will be used to feed LLMs, regardless of your license.

It is perfectly fine to slap MIT on your JavaScript widget and let some junior in some shop use it to get their project done. Makes people's life easier, and you don't want to sue anyone anyway in case of license violations.

If you're building a kernel module for a TCP reimplementation which dramatically outperforms the current implementation, yeah, probably a different story

I read a story of someone that contributed to a BSD project, including fixes over some period of time, but later they ended up having to use a proprietary UNIX for work, that included their code, in a an intermediate, buggy state, but they were legally forbidden from applying their own bug fixes!

At the very least the GPL guarantees that if I am ever downstream of myself, I has fix my own damn mistakes and don't have to suffer them.

I am still willing to contribute to BSD stuff, but vastly prefer something like the AGPLv3.

I know Luke Smith is controversial, but this Blogpost of him is kinda funny and fits the topic:

Why I Use the GPL and Not Cuck Licenses

In some cases it works, in some it doesn't. PostgreSQL for example for huge support after Oracle got control of MySQL, despite the license.

Something I don't get paid enough to understand - what constitutes contributions, and what's the definition of selling the software?

For instance, I don't think I've worked on a project where we have made changes to the source code for security policies (much quicker path to update immediately if something gets flagged). But I don't think I know of an instance where we sell our software as a service - as far as I know it's largely used to support other services we sell.

Except now that I say that, that's not entirely true, we DO have a review board that we have to submit every third party library to and it takes forever to hear back but we have occasionally gotten a "no can't use that" or "contract is pending." So maybe I'm just super unaware of who reviews the third party software and they review the licenses.

Can someone help me? I have been licencing my code under BSD2Clause, I wish to switch to gplv3. How do I switch?

1. Do I have to put the licence at the top of every file?
2. Where do I put my name ie Copyright

Thank you

LGPL ftw

No one brought up ai yet? No, srsly …..

My opinion on these licenses is theoretical since I haven’t actually developed any open source.

However an analogous scenario which DOES affect me, and most people here ….

• I’ve posted my opinion online in various places. Offered freely to the public to do as they please.
• I’m fine with companies making money off providing the aggregate of such efforts to the public, such as by advertising. However my pseudonym retains credit and the audience is open

All well and good until AI came along and everyone sees a potential jackpot. And there’s Reddit, wanting a bigger share of that jackpot. They’ve taken the idea a step farther and I’m not ok with it. I guess I don’t like the restrictions and I don’t like the extra levels of profiteering: Reddit makes money off providing my content in a limited form to private companies. They in turn make money off AI trained by my content, to a limited audience and there is no longer a portion credited to my pseudonym. Technically they’re in the right since I never thought to prevent this scenario, but they’re not using it in the way I expected/intended/ was told