I hope we eventually get a copyleft lisence that states: “by using this product in a comercial product you have commited to supporting it, either by monetary fee or doing development work for it behalf, otherwise this product is entirely free of cost and is provided as-is”.
Edit: and the developers can freely reproduce the GPL license exception for all their products:
// Under Section 7 of GPL version 3, you are granted additional// permissions described in the GCC Runtime Library Exception, version// 3.1, as published by the Free Software Foundation.
Currently, and I don’t know why, this extremely useful license exception for (C++) headers, which is meant for compiled down to machine-code is not usable for anything else. If your library is not part of GCC, the GPL does not help you here. As such, if you publish a header only library under GPL, you cannot state that the code using your code is not under “API” boundary, ie. free of GPL, while keeping your precious header under GPL. And no, LGPL, does not save you here.
You only have non-copyleft lisences like MIT (disgusting), Apache (shitly less gross), BSL-1.0 (still non copyleft) or LGPL (not gross, but extremely limiting.)
And, if you still publish something, I plead it is at least under GPL, since this guarantees a life for the produce, non-negotioable, forever, which I think is still better than dying and giving up to pooh of public domain.
I don’t think believe using GPL will achieve anything. I am a professional developer. If I’m looking for a library for a problem and find one that’s GPL, then I will simply not consider using it. What are the options here?
I could search for a different library with an MIT license. Let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that there are none.
I could ask my boss if I can release all our source code to the public. Yeah, sure. That’s going to happen.
I could ask my boss if I can have a bit of budget to haggle out a license with the library author. That’s a waste of time and money. Hammering out a license agreement across language boundaries and jurisdictions will involve a lot of lawyering and waiting that’s just not worth it. The additional fees would likely even outweigh the agreed payment to the author.
So what’s left? I don’t use a library and program the thing myself. It might take a while, but I’m way cheaper than lawyers. So in the end, GPL won’t do a thing to force a business to support FOSS, but will annoy developers.
That’s why, if I ever am in a position to meaningfully add to FOSS, it will be under the MIT license.
You shouldn’t be using GPL licensed software for that. End of the story. The person who created that software doesn’t want you tp use in your proprietary software and thats exactly why it is GPL. Only Free software are supposed to use them.
Think about it. You cannot use proprietary code of other softwares in your workplace, so why should you be able to use free software in yours? The work done by you for your employer is not benefiting free software, unless yours is also free. So yeah GPL is a “fuck proprietary” license by design. And it does achive its thing. It is good for other free software, and everyone is forced to preserve the freedom in it.
It sounds more like you think you are entitled to have access to a library to begin with. Why should one exist that you can exploit in a way that your business wants rather than one that respects freedom—this is where I completely agree with the software freedom folks.
If you work for a private business that is earning profit, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to pay for a library or build it yourself. Why should something else just exist for your business to exploit?
I hope we eventually get a copyleft lisence that states: “by using this product in a comercial product you have commited to supporting it, either by monetary fee or doing development work for it behalf, otherwise this product is entirely free of cost and is provided as-is”.
Edit: and the developers can freely reproduce the GPL license exception for all their products:
// Under Section 7 of GPL version 3, you are granted additional // permissions described in the GCC Runtime Library Exception, version // 3.1, as published by the Free Software Foundation.Currently, and I don’t know why, this extremely useful license exception for (C++) headers, which is meant for compiled down to machine-code is not usable for anything else. If your library is not part of GCC, the GPL does not help you here. As such, if you publish a header only library under GPL, you cannot state that the code using your code is not under “API” boundary, ie. free of GPL, while keeping your precious header under GPL. And no, LGPL, does not save you here.
You only have non-copyleft lisences like MIT (disgusting), Apache (shitly less gross), BSL-1.0 (still non copyleft) or LGPL (not gross, but extremely limiting.)
And, if you still publish something, I plead it is at least under GPL, since this guarantees a life for the produce, non-negotioable, forever, which I think is still better than dying and giving up to pooh of public domain.
You can just dual-license as AGPL and a separate commercial license that you negotiate on a case-by-case basis.
I don’t think believe using GPL will achieve anything. I am a professional developer. If I’m looking for a library for a problem and find one that’s GPL, then I will simply not consider using it. What are the options here?
I could search for a different library with an MIT license. Let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that there are none.
I could ask my boss if I can release all our source code to the public. Yeah, sure. That’s going to happen.
I could ask my boss if I can have a bit of budget to haggle out a license with the library author. That’s a waste of time and money. Hammering out a license agreement across language boundaries and jurisdictions will involve a lot of lawyering and waiting that’s just not worth it. The additional fees would likely even outweigh the agreed payment to the author.
So what’s left? I don’t use a library and program the thing myself. It might take a while, but I’m way cheaper than lawyers. So in the end, GPL won’t do a thing to force a business to support FOSS, but will annoy developers.
That’s why, if I ever am in a position to meaningfully add to FOSS, it will be under the MIT license.
You shouldn’t be using GPL licensed software for that. End of the story. The person who created that software doesn’t want you tp use in your proprietary software and thats exactly why it is GPL. Only Free software are supposed to use them.
Think about it. You cannot use proprietary code of other softwares in your workplace, so why should you be able to use free software in yours? The work done by you for your employer is not benefiting free software, unless yours is also free. So yeah GPL is a “fuck proprietary” license by design. And it does achive its thing. It is good for other free software, and everyone is forced to preserve the freedom in it.
It sounds more like you think you are entitled to have access to a library to begin with. Why should one exist that you can exploit in a way that your business wants rather than one that respects freedom—this is where I completely agree with the software freedom folks.
If you work for a private business that is earning profit, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to pay for a library or build it yourself. Why should something else just exist for your business to exploit?