Comment by mopenstein
6 months ago
The only difference is that the people getting upset about this stuff is money. They hate the idea that someone is making money off their work. Even if the sum of their work amounts to a penny. They're just angry.
In 50 years they'll be useless anyway when computers are just plotting every iteration and combination of 1's and 0's that might be.
I too see no difference in machines learning from the works of others than man standing on the shoulders of those before them to reach higher plateaus.
It's all a big to-do about nothing.
I for one don’t care if anyone makes money from my code. It’s released as Free Software as a reason. I wrote something I needed, and I release it to the world to help other people.
However, when you look at the license of the software I release, there are some terms I put forward. In short, it’s called GPLv3+ or AGPLv3+ depending on the thing I have written. You can use/develop/fork/integrate/sell it. I don’t care, as long as you obey the license terms.
Don’t obeying these terms, and running with the code is wrong. Even if you put the laws aside, that’s unethical. This is what makes my blood boil.
I do not develop software as a job. I do it as a side quest, and more importantly as research. I don’t want my research to be laundered and closed down, but be available and free as much as possible. This is why I use copyleft licenses.
If you care about developer freedom, you write Open Source code with permissive licenses. If you care about users’ freedom, you write Free Software with copyleft licenses.
I care about users’ freedom, not developers’ freedom to rip any code and embed into their code bases, which permissive licenses are designed for.
This blatant selfishness of “we are doing something great, we need no permission” is angering me.
Otherwise, get my scrappy code and make a million dollars with it. As long as you obey the license, I don’t care. On the contrary, I applaud you.