Comment by Liquix
3 years ago
It's MIT licensed, so anyone can incorporate based on the original author's work and turn a profit. He is not owed anything. This is an eventuality you are implicitly accepting when choosing MIT over GPL.
3 years ago
It's MIT licensed, so anyone can incorporate based on the original author's work and turn a profit. He is not owed anything. This is an eventuality you are implicitly accepting when choosing MIT over GPL.
Of course they're legally allowed to do so, it's just a question of does it make sense vis-a-vis their stated values about community and rewarding the people who has worked on the project.
GPL or MIT doesn't really matter all that much here; the only difference is that with the GPL I'd have release all the source. There is nothing in the GPL stopping me from starting a Compiler Inc.™ SaaS based on gcc that "compiles code as a service".
I'm confused, this would also be true with the GPL, no (just with the added restriction they would have to redistribute their changes)?
My understanding is the point of free software is that you can do (almost) anything you want with it, including sell it.