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Comment by p-e-w

11 hours ago

Imagine if the AGPL had become the default license for open source projects, as it was intended to when the service provider loophole in the GPL became apparent. The software industry would be unrecognizable.

Instead, millions of developers now gift corporations their work by releasing everything under MIT or Apache, and those corporations take from that treasure trove what they want and give back what they want, which is very often nothing.

12 comments

p-e-w

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999900000999  8 hours ago

Some projects , like Godot are MIT so contributors can use it for their own commercial projects.

Occasionally, EA for example, a big corp will donate some money to. Apple has created PRS to add support for Vision Pro.

If Godot was GPL it would be useless for most commercial game devs.

  • shimman  7 hours ago

    You are absolutely allowed to use GPL software in commercial products, why are you deliberately lying or misleading?

    GitHub could only exist because it was built on top of git, which is also GPL licensed. This is not the only example but should be the immediate one since nearly a vast majority of devs touch git on a daily basis.

    Maybe stop listening to your legal team and actually think for a moment. GPL doesn't prevent commercialization, what it does is make sure everyone contributes to the same project equally. Shocker, corporations do not want to contribute to the common good they want to rat fuck it into submission for profit.

    • 999900000999  6 hours ago

      You have to then contribute all your changes back.

      The Godot foundation picked MIT for a good reason. If your legal team says no GPL then no GPL. This has been standard practice for decades.

      2 replies →

bayindirh  9 hours ago

I believe Open Source software sold developers the dream of "to be hired for what they have developed" and cash-in the effort they have spent as a future, stable employment.

Many die on the hill of "developing something required for free with permissive licenses for recognition which will help with their future endeavors", which is the same with other creative lines of work. As a result they are milked of their knowledge and forced to bear the burden of leading the project and handling the community while companies just use what's developed while quietly but strongly nudging the project's direction for their benefit.

If the developer gets rogue, the thing is forked and sometimes closed down with no downside to the company, but the community and the developer(s) are hung to dry, conveniently signaling other developers about what they might face if they disobey their overlords with iron fists in velvet gloves as a secondary effect.

  • trumpdong  9 hours ago

    I think you can get recognition just as well with share-alike licenses. Plus you leave the opportunity open to ask for money for a different license grant.

    • bayindirh  9 hours ago

      I believe strongly so, however companies doesn't like this, hence the current state we're in. Also it's part of the "advertising" done by the companies.

      Last but not the least, many people are very ill-informed about GPL and how it works. I experience this when we discuss this with peers.

      This is why I only use copyleft (or non-commercial/share-alike) licenses on what I build/produce/put out.

    • limagnolia  8 hours ago

      If you share your code with me under a copy left license, I will share my contributions under the same copy left license... you will not then be free to ask for money for things built on top of or with my contributions. You may be okay with that, but it is a decision you have to make.

      1 reply →

hacker_homie  10 hours ago

lying about the license to linus probably wasn't a smart move for AGPLv3 adoption. In my experience the virality clause is the main reason those projects don't get used therefor sponsored.