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"
Honestly it's probably just because so many devs are involved more in their code and don't want to worry about the nuances and headaches involved in licensing. MIT is still open source.
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"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.
Since you seem so reasonable…
The restriction that some people object to is that the GPL restricts the freedom of the software developers (the people actually writing and contributing the code).
Most people would agree at first glance that developers should be able to license code that they write under whatever license they like. MIT is one option. Some prefer the GPL. Most see the right to choose a proprietary license for your own work as ok but some people describe this as unethical.
If we are talking about code that already exists, the GPL restricts freedom without adding any that MIT does not also provide.
MIT licensed software is “free software” by definition. Once something has been MIT licensed, it is Open Source and cannot be taken away.
The MIT license provides all of the Free Software Foundations “4 freedoms”. It also provides freedoms that the GPL does not.
What the MIT license does not provide is guaranteed access to “future” code that has not yet been written. That is, in an MIT licensed code base, you can add new code that is not free. In a GPL code base, this is not possible.
So, the GPL removes rights from the developers in that it removes the right to license future code contributions as you want. Under the GPL, the right of users to get future code for free is greater than the right of the developer to license their future contributions. Some people do not see that as a freedom. Some even see it as quite the opposite (forced servitude). This “freedom” is not one of the “4 freedoms” touted by the FSF but it is the main feature of the GPL.
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Here's a fun idea, let's fork these MIT-based projects and licence them under the AGPL
You could do that. MIT is a very free license.
Of course, that would only be a useful thing to do if you were also going to contribute to the code.
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Then it's not one that is actively helping the FOSS community
How is actually writing and contributing free software not “actively helping the FOSS community”?
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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.
Some people might say that so many companies contributing free and open code to clang/llvm instead of GCC is real world evidence against the idea that companies only contribute to free software because the GPL makes them. Or even that permissive licenses can lead to greater corporate sharing than the GPL does. Why does Apple openly contribute to LLVM but refuse to ship GPL3 anything?
According to the web, Red Hat is the most evil company in Open Source. They are also the biggest contributor to Xorg and Wayland. Those are MIT licensed. Why don’t they just keep all their code to themselves? The license would allow it after all. Why did they license systemd as GPL? They did not have to.
The memory allocator used in my distro was written by Microsoft. I have not paid them a dime and I enjoy “the 4 freedoms” with the code they gave me because it is completely free software. Guess what license it uses?
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If it is solely for investors, then I understand. However I'm saddened to think that altrium in software has gone to the gutter
I’m saddened to think that altruism in software has gone to the gutter
Yeah me too but it's been a long time coming. Ubuntu started it decades ago by replacing the altruism* with a warm and fuzzy "sense of community" while exploiting the enthusiasm of largely unpaid coders, Google certainly has done this for a long while, and by now it's just how you do your basic FOSS Kickstarter campaign.
All that really brings is "more customers", and doG knows that's not what the whole of GNU/Linux needs.
Over the years I have developed a sense for how projects present themselves before choosing one that suits my needs.
Because the sane ones, both feet on the ground types, that do GPL and accept donations (or sometimes offer paid support), those still exist, old and new.* a form of altruism btw that does not exclude egoism!
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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"
Apple makes the source code to all their core utilities available? Nobody cares but they do.
Why do they?
They are BSD licensed (very similar to MIT). According to the crowd here, Apple would never Open Source their changes. Yet, in the real world, they do.
Every Linux distro uses CUPS for printing. Apple wrote that and gave it away as free software.
How do we explain that?
There are many companies that use BSD as a base. None of them have forked the BSD utilities.
Why not?
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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
Numbers would be a lot different I think if the issue were not closed 4 years ago
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You could do that. MIT is a very free license.
Of course, that would only be a useful thing to do if you were also going to contribute to the code.
True, but the mere existence of an AGPL project that follows the MIT one might be enough to convince would-be contributors to choose our version instead.
It may also be more likely to be adopted by non-corporate Linux distros that favour the AGPL over MIT (Debian for example) which in turn could help make the AGPL version the dominant one.
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If it is solely for investors, then I understand. However I'm saddened to think that altrium in software has gone to the gutter
Is giving away your software in a way that doesn't use a copyleft license, not altruistic? Seems like a pretty narrow definition.
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The point is that even if companies have the personnel to contribute back, most of them don't. It simply isn't in their interest. If a project is good enough, AGPL will mean that no monopoly will form around that project and open standards will be maintained. AGPL is simply a bastion against closed-source software working against the best interests of consumers
Yeah I get that point, and so my point is that if the use case is important enough that they'd be able to justify allocating that personnel, I use the AGPL to give them that nudge. When it's just some non-critical component, then I'll just slap an MIT on it and be done with it.
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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
I"m with you on copyleft, but if I had any connection to the project and felt the need to add a reaction emoji, it'd probably be a "thumbs-down" as well.
It's not because I'm against the GPL, but because of the way the GitHub comment is written.
It doesn't even say "you should use the GPL", it says "you MUST say GNU doesn't agree with you". I'm perplexed.
Now, I respect the idea of GNU, but the way GNUers in general go about behaving themselves is perfect to alienate people, and this GitHub issue is a prime example. I don't get it.
If people don't know about GNU, tell them. Nicely.
If people have misconceptions about GNU, there's nothing wrong with fixing them. Again, nicely.
The problem is, whenever I encounter GNU and however much I agree with them on key issues (which is at about 90%, my main gripe with them being Freedom 0), they just have a knack to get me, someone who is with them on most issues, annoyed at them. I can clearly see how someone who isn't as alligned with them as I am gets equally annoyed and avoids GPL and GNU like the plague just to fuck with 'em (while fucking over everyone, including themselves). Not to mention ones into the libertarian stream, since you yourself covered that pretty well.
What the GitHub issue you linked that I keep coming back to shows is this GNU herd mentality of fucking over others unintentionally and in turn fucking over everyone. While they're clearly better than the "libtards", they still end up doing the same mistake.
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True, but the mere existence of an AGPL project that follows the MIT one might be enough to convince would-be contributors to choose our version instead.
It may also be more likely to be adopted by non-corporate Linux distros that favour the AGPL over MIT (Debian for example) which in turn could help make the AGPL version the dominant one.
Note that AGPL can take changes from MIT but MIT can't take changes that are purely AGPL without following the AGPL.
So, as far as I can understand, any improvements done to the AGPL version cannot be carried over to the MIT version (without very painful and careful re-implementation / re-engineering). That alone would be a big advantage to the hypothetical AGPL fork.
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Apple makes the source code to all their core utilities available? Nobody cares but they do.
Why do they?
They are BSD licensed (very similar to MIT). According to the crowd here, Apple would never Open Source their changes. Yet, in the real world, they do.
Every Linux distro uses CUPS for printing. Apple wrote that and gave it away as free software.
How do we explain that?
There are many companies that use BSD as a base. None of them have forked the BSD utilities.
Why not?
Apple makes the source code to all their core utilities available
Apple makes the source code for many open source things they distribute available, but often only long after they have shipped binaries. And many parts of their OS which they developed in-house which could also be called "core utilities" are not open source at all.
Every Linux distro uses CUPS for printing. Apple wrote that and gave it away as free software.
::: spoiler Apple did not write cups.
It was was created by Michael R. Sweet in 1997, and was GPL-licensed and used on Linux distros before Mac OS X existed. Apple didn't want to be bound by the GPL so they purchased a different license for it in 2002.Later, in 2007 they bought the source code and hired msweet to continue its development, and at some point the license of the FOSS version was changed to "GNU General Public License ("GPL") and GNU Library General Public License ("LGPL"), Version 2, with an exception for Apple operating systems."
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I"m with you on copyleft, but if I had any connection to the project and felt the need to add a reaction emoji, it'd probably be a "thumbs-down" as well.
It's not because I'm against the GPL, but because of the way the GitHub comment is written.
It doesn't even say "you should use the GPL", it says "you MUST say GNU doesn't agree with you". I'm perplexed.
Now, I respect the idea of GNU, but the way GNUers in general go about behaving themselves is perfect to alienate people, and this GitHub issue is a prime example. I don't get it.
If people don't know about GNU, tell them. Nicely.
If people have misconceptions about GNU, there's nothing wrong with fixing them. Again, nicely.
The problem is, whenever I encounter GNU and however much I agree with them on key issues (which is at about 90%, my main gripe with them being Freedom 0), they just have a knack to get me, someone who is with them on most issues, annoyed at them. I can clearly see how someone who isn't as alligned with them as I am gets equally annoyed and avoids GPL and GNU like the plague just to fuck with 'em (while fucking over everyone, including themselves). Not to mention ones into the libertarian stream, since you yourself covered that pretty well.
What the GitHub issue you linked that I keep coming back to shows is this GNU herd mentality of fucking over others unintentionally and in turn fucking over everyone. While they're clearly better than the "libtards", they still end up doing the same mistake.
It doesn’t even say “you should use the GPL”
That sounds a lot more confrontational than what the Github issue proposes, though.
it says “you MUST say GNU doesn’t agree with you”
Somehow you added the "MUST" to this sentence, not to the first one.. even though the github issue did not say they MUST, they even used the word "please".
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Apple makes the source code to all their core utilities available
Apple makes the source code for many open source things they distribute available, but often only long after they have shipped binaries. And many parts of their OS which they developed in-house which could also be called "core utilities" are not open source at all.
Every Linux distro uses CUPS for printing. Apple wrote that and gave it away as free software.
::: spoiler Apple did not write cups.
It was was created by Michael R. Sweet in 1997, and was GPL-licensed and used on Linux distros before Mac OS X existed. Apple didn't want to be bound by the GPL so they purchased a different license for it in 2002.Later, in 2007 they bought the source code and hired msweet to continue its development, and at some point the license of the FOSS version was changed to "GNU General Public License ("GPL") and GNU Library General Public License ("LGPL"), Version 2, with an exception for Apple operating systems."
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Since you seem so reasonable…
The restriction that some people object to is that the GPL restricts the freedom of the software developers (the people actually writing and contributing the code).
Most people would agree at first glance that developers should be able to license code that they write under whatever license they like. MIT is one option. Some prefer the GPL. Most see the right to choose a proprietary license for your own work as ok but some people describe this as unethical.
If we are talking about code that already exists, the GPL restricts freedom without adding any that MIT does not also provide.
MIT licensed software is “free software” by definition. Once something has been MIT licensed, it is Open Source and cannot be taken away.
The MIT license provides all of the Free Software Foundations “4 freedoms”. It also provides freedoms that the GPL does not.
What the MIT license does not provide is guaranteed access to “future” code that has not yet been written. That is, in an MIT licensed code base, you can add new code that is not free. In a GPL code base, this is not possible.
So, the GPL removes rights from the developers in that it removes the right to license future code contributions as you want. Under the GPL, the right of users to get future code for free is greater than the right of the developer to license their future contributions. Some people do not see that as a freedom. Some even see it as quite the opposite (forced servitude). This “freedom” is not one of the “4 freedoms” touted by the FSF but it is the main feature of the GPL.
developers should be able to license code that they write under whatever license they like
What if they choose a license that limits the freedom from all other developers to improve the software: is this action overall good for freedom of the developers or not?
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Yeah I get that point, and so my point is that if the use case is important enough that they'd be able to justify allocating that personnel, I use the AGPL to give them that nudge. When it's just some non-critical component, then I'll just slap an MIT on it and be done with it.
The only problem is companies will always try to use MIT and using it for small projects will set a precedent. And we don't have a governing body strong enough to enforce the GPL (nobody listens to the FSF)
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Is giving away your software in a way that doesn't use a copyleft license, not altruistic? Seems like a pretty narrow definition.
Altruism towards shareholders, not the open-source community
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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"
If you're developing software for a platform that doesn't allow users to replace dynamic libraries (game consoles, iOS, many embedded/commercial systems), you won't be able to legally use any GPL or AGPL libraries.
While I strongly agree with the motives behind copyleft licenses, I personally never use them because I've had many occasions where I was unable to use any available library for a specific task because they all had incompatible licenses.
I release code for the sole purpose of allowing others to use it. I don't want to impose any restrictions on my fellow developers, because I understand the struggle it can bring.
Even for desktop programs, I prefer MIT or BSD because it allows others to take snippets of code without needing to re-license anything.
Yes I understand that means anyone can make a closed-source fork, but that doesn't bother me.
If I wanted to sell it I might care, but I would have used a different license for a commercial project anyway.
and iOS