cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44059967
for those not familiar with Mark Pilgrim, he is/was a prolific author, blogger, and hacker who abruptly disappeared from the internet in 2011.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/968527
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44059967
for those not familiar with Mark Pilgrim, he is/was a prolific author, blogger, and hacker who abruptly disappeared from the internet in 2011.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/968527
nope, here *GPL acts like cancer, once it touches something, it remains *GPL until the last bit of it is still there.
Cancer is a bad analogy. It’s more like antibodies against non-free bactetia :)
I have a completely different view of what free means. xGPL are restrictive and sticky.
The freedom to deny others the same freedom?
Ok, maybe explain the restrictions that offend you so much?
GPL licenses are straight-up cancer, they force every derivative or linked project to adopt their viral copyleft rules, nuking proprietary reuse or easy mixing with other codebases, while a weird GPL cult preaches it as the one true path to “openness” and “freedom”. As someone who codes purely for fun, I like the dead-simple clarity of MIT and BSD: just keep the notice and license text, then do whatever the hell you want. No GPL bullshit or compliance headaches for me, permissive licenses like these keep my sanity intact.
GPL is especially popular with people who don’t want their labor of love to become a source of free labor for corporations who will tweak it, close the source, directly profit off it, and never donate or contribute patches. For them, it’s an antiparasitic license.
I’ve heard that “corporate parasite” argument way too often, but it’s massively overrated. Open Source allows selling anyway, MIT, BSD and GPL all do. If someone makes smart changes and lives off it, that’s awesome, not reprehensible!
GPL only forces source disclosure when distributing binaries, not for every damn thing – imagine you land a juicy company contract: you tweak a GPL work, deliver the binaries, and only have to hand the modified source TO THAT COMPANY, NOT the whole world! That’s why AGPL fanatics had to invent their SaaS trap. For me as a hobby coder, GPLs are just pointless headaches instead of real freedom.
This is naive. Very naive.
We would not have such a huge Linux infrastructure and support for all those different components without GPL.
Every modern car uses Linux. I repeat, one of the most locked down industries uses Linux on custom hardware on millions of cars.
Indeed, very limiting.
Or, gcc, the Compiler everybody uses to build Linux stuff and the kernel? This is a direct GNU project. Without GPL and the requirements to provide changes, we would have thousands of gcc based, closed source compilers. Most likely expensive to, to build optimized arm code and other stuff.
But, feel free to protest the usage of GPL by not using any GPL licensed software.
It’s not naive – naive is believing Linux’ success comes only from GPL. That’s ridiculous. Windows sells like crazy too, does that make its license the nonplusultra?
Linux booms because of Open Source (not just GPL), sponsoring (IBM, RedHat), thousands of volunteers, and pure luck. Without GPL? Sure, some BSD-derivative would’ve eaten that niche.
GCC? Without GPL we’d have more compilers – not just one monopolist. You’re confusing protection with innovation death.
OSX and FreeBSD show that it isn’t an overrated argument.
What’s wrong with OSX?
That’s… The point of the GPL licenses, to preserve copyleft. I also prefer the simplicity of the MIT license for my own works, but I respect the copyleft ideals.
If it’s all your own work then a license is purely for others to follow. MIT and GPL license can be just as simple as including a textfile of that license in the project.
Ideally one includes a header in each code file to ensure people just looking at that file (without project context) know the license.
Licenses like the MIT are built to support grifters that just want to take and not contribute back, so…