What's with the move to MIT over AGPL for utilities?
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I would understand if Canonical want a new cow to milk, but why are developers even agreeing to this? Are they out of their minds?? Do they actually want companies to steal their code? Or is this some reverse-uno move I don't see yet? I cannot fathom any FOSS project not using the AGPL anymore. It's like they're painting their faces with "here, take my stuff and don't contribute anything back, that's totally fine"
Speaking for myself, it’s because future monetization can be easier under mit when using a foss utility and private code.
My project would not exist at all unless there were ways to make money off it.
True, others can also use that same code too, in the exact same way, but that requires quite the investment, and those of us that are doing this are banking on not getting the interest of a monopoly in that way. We are competing against other small businesses who have limited resources.
At the same time the free part can get a boost by the community.
I comment a lot in politics here, and am sometimes an ass, so cannot name this project
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The unfortunate reality is that a significant proportion of software engineers (and other IT folks) are either laissez-faire "libertarians" who are ideologically opposed to the restrictions in the GPL, or "apolitical" tech-bros who are mostly just interested in their six figure paychecks.
To these folks, the MIT/BSD licenses have fewer restrictions, and are therefore more free, and are therefore more better.
it's interesting how the move away from the gpl is never explicitly justified as a license issue: instead, people always have some plausible technical motivation. with clang/llvm it was the lower compile times and better error messages; with these coreutils it's "rust therefore safer". the license change was never even addressed
i believe they have to do this exactly bc permissive licenses appeal to libertarian/apolitical types who see themselves as purely rational and changing a piece of software bc of the license would sound too... ideological...
so the people in charge of these changes always have a plausible technical explanation i hand to mask away the political aspect of the change
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Speaking for myself, it’s because future monetization can be easier under mit when using a foss utility and private code.
My project would not exist at all unless there were ways to make money off it.
True, others can also use that same code too, in the exact same way, but that requires quite the investment, and those of us that are doing this are banking on not getting the interest of a monopoly in that way. We are competing against other small businesses who have limited resources.
At the same time the free part can get a boost by the community.
I comment a lot in politics here, and am sometimes an ass, so cannot name this project
not sure how it would be more difficult to make money using gpl tools
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not sure how it would be more difficult to make money using gpl tools
For our use case, this makes the most sense.
I’m not at all sure about the larger trend you noticed, but I know a non trivial number are doing it for the same reasons
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I would understand if Canonical want a new cow to milk, but why are developers even agreeing to this? Are they out of their minds?? Do they actually want companies to steal their code? Or is this some reverse-uno move I don't see yet? I cannot fathom any FOSS project not using the AGPL anymore. It's like they're painting their faces with "here, take my stuff and don't contribute anything back, that's totally fine"
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For our use case, this makes the most sense.
I’m not at all sure about the larger trend you noticed, but I know a non trivial number are doing it for the same reasons
Could you elaborate on those reasons, please? I'm not sure what you mean.
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The unfortunate reality is that a significant proportion of software engineers (and other IT folks) are either laissez-faire "libertarians" who are ideologically opposed to the restrictions in the GPL, or "apolitical" tech-bros who are mostly just interested in their six figure paychecks.
To these folks, the MIT/BSD licenses have fewer restrictions, and are therefore more free, and are therefore more better.
"apolitical" tech-bros who are mostly just interested in their six figure paychecks and fancy toys.
This, I understand.
laissez-faire "libertarians" who are ideologically opposed to the restrictions in the GPL
This, I do not. Apologies for my tone in the next paragraph but I'm really pissed off (not directed at you):
WHAT RESTRICTIONS???? IF YOU LOT HAD EVEN A SHRED OF SYMPATHY FOR THE COMMUNITY YOU WOULD HAVE BOYCOTTED THE MIT AND APACHE LICENSE BY NOW. THIS IS EQUIVALENT TO HANDING CORPORATIONS YOUR WORK AND BEGGING THEM TO SCREW OVER YOUR WORK AND THE FOSS COMMUNITY.
I feel a bit better but not by much. This makes me vomit.
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For small programs the FSF/GNU even suggests considering not using the GPL https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html
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it's been a trend for a while unfortunately. getting rid of the gpl is the motivation behind e.g. companies sponsoring clang/llvm so hard right now. there's also developers that think permissive licenses are "freer" bc freedom is doing whatever you want /s. they're ideologically motivated to ditch the gpl so they'll support the change even if there's no benefit for them, financial or otherwise.
They are maliciously harming the community. They need to be named and shamed. I still seethe at OpenBSD using it. Why is it so hard for them to understand? Why do they want to give away their work for the taking to corporations who just want to make money off of their backs?
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For small programs the FSF/GNU even suggests considering not using the GPL https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html
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it's interesting how the move away from the gpl is never explicitly justified as a license issue: instead, people always have some plausible technical motivation. with clang/llvm it was the lower compile times and better error messages; with these coreutils it's "rust therefore safer". the license change was never even addressed
i believe they have to do this exactly bc permissive licenses appeal to libertarian/apolitical types who see themselves as purely rational and changing a piece of software bc of the license would sound too... ideological...
so the people in charge of these changes always have a plausible technical explanation i hand to mask away the political aspect of the change
The rust coreutils project choosing the MIT license is just another gambit to allow something like android or chromeos happen to gnu+linux, where all of the userland gets replaced by proprietary junk.
And yet that's a popularly welcomed approach, for some reason. Just look at the number of thumbs down this has. https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781
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it's interesting how the move away from the gpl is never explicitly justified as a license issue: instead, people always have some plausible technical motivation. with clang/llvm it was the lower compile times and better error messages; with these coreutils it's "rust therefore safer". the license change was never even addressed
i believe they have to do this exactly bc permissive licenses appeal to libertarian/apolitical types who see themselves as purely rational and changing a piece of software bc of the license would sound too... ideological...
so the people in charge of these changes always have a plausible technical explanation i hand to mask away the political aspect of the change
I use LLVM because it's good, but I would like it even more if it was GPL and I agree with OP's comment as well.
However, you're literally the guy that replies "oh, so you hate oranges" to people that say "I like apples" or however that meme goes. How about you don't completely twist people's justifications into something they never said.
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it's been a trend for a while unfortunately. getting rid of the gpl is the motivation behind e.g. companies sponsoring clang/llvm so hard right now. there's also developers that think permissive licenses are "freer" bc freedom is doing whatever you want /s. they're ideologically motivated to ditch the gpl so they'll support the change even if there's no benefit for them, financial or otherwise.
getting rid of the gpl is the motivation behind e.g. companies sponsoring clang/llvm so hard right now
And there it is. Follow the money.
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I would understand if Canonical want a new cow to milk, but why are developers even agreeing to this? Are they out of their minds?? Do they actually want companies to steal their code? Or is this some reverse-uno move I don't see yet? I cannot fathom any FOSS project not using the AGPL anymore. It's like they're painting their faces with "here, take my stuff and don't contribute anything back, that's totally fine"
Maybe there could be another reason why people choose MIT to begin with:
When you start a new repo on github it makes suggestions which license to use, and I bet many people can't be arsed to think about it and just accept what they're offered. [My memory is a little patchy since I very rarely use github anymore, but I definitely remember something like this.]
That said, please undestand that many, many git platforms exist and there is no reason at all to choose one of the two that actually have the word git in them.
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Could you elaborate on those reasons, please? I'm not sure what you mean.
The mit license allows a mix of public and commercial code run by the same company, with minimal legal issues. One can use other tactics I am sure, but this one seems good when the commercial code absolutely needs the public code .
I think some confusion here can be resolved by stating this is anti foss, taking advantage of foss, it is capitalism taking advantage of having a good code base while making sure any contribution from outside the company is minimized. At the same time it gives my company absolute control over the private part.
Usually get into arguments here! I’m not defending it, but am saying open source would be less without.
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I would understand if Canonical want a new cow to milk, but why are developers even agreeing to this? Are they out of their minds?? Do they actually want companies to steal their code? Or is this some reverse-uno move I don't see yet? I cannot fathom any FOSS project not using the AGPL anymore. It's like they're painting their faces with "here, take my stuff and don't contribute anything back, that's totally fine"
I assume this is in reference to the rust coreutils being MIT-licensed. How would using GPL benefit them?
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I would understand if Canonical want a new cow to milk, but why are developers even agreeing to this? Are they out of their minds?? Do they actually want companies to steal their code? Or is this some reverse-uno move I don't see yet? I cannot fathom any FOSS project not using the AGPL anymore. It's like they're painting their faces with "here, take my stuff and don't contribute anything back, that's totally fine"
I worked on an oss library with an MIT license and my colleagues told me they with that instead of GPL was with GPL it basically forces anyone who uses the library to make everything in their project available.
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I assume this is in reference to the rust coreutils being MIT-licensed. How would using GPL benefit them?
Improvements would be upstreamed. Not with MIT
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Maybe there could be another reason why people choose MIT to begin with:
When you start a new repo on github it makes suggestions which license to use, and I bet many people can't be arsed to think about it and just accept what they're offered. [My memory is a little patchy since I very rarely use github anymore, but I definitely remember something like this.]
That said, please undestand that many, many git platforms exist and there is no reason at all to choose one of the two that actually have the word git in them.
I can't believe professional developers choose MIT because they can't be arsed to look at the license choices
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I worked on an oss library with an MIT license and my colleagues told me they with that instead of GPL was with GPL it basically forces anyone who uses the library to make everything in their project available.
Only if they make changes/improvements to the code. If it's a library that is used then no, AFAIK you don't need to.
