Context:

Permissive licenses (commonly referred to as “removed licenses”) like the MIT license allow others to modify your software and release it under an unfree license. Copyleft licenses (like the Gnu General Public License) mandate that all derivative works remain free.

Andrew Tanenbaum developed MINIX, a modular operating system kernel. Intel went ahead and used it to build Management Engine, arguably one of the most widespread and invasive pieces of malware in the world, without even as much as telling him. There’s nothing Tanenbaum could do, since the MIT license allows this.

Erik Andersen is one of the developers of Busybox, a minimal implementation of that’s suited for embedded systems. Many companies tried to steal his code and distribute it with their unfree products, but since it’s protected under the GPL, Busybox developers were able to sue them and gain some money in the process.

Interestingly enough, Tanenbaum doesn’t seem to mind what intel did. But there are some examples out there of people regretting releasing their work under a permissive license.

  • rglullis@communick.news
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    5 months ago

    we would just handwrite an inferior solution from scratch rather than handle the bureaucracy.

    What company are you working for whose leadership thinks that it is a better use of their time to reimplementing FOSS solutions just because they can’t get it “for free”?

      • rglullis@communick.news
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        5 months ago

        So what is your argument? Who is responsible for the decision-making process that leads to “hand writing an inferior solution”? Why do you think that this at all acceptable and reasonable?

        You’ve been writing nothing but opinion-as-fact and resorting to wild rationalizations to justify your preferences, now you want to couch yourself under the questionable ethics of “it’s done this way and I can not fight it, so it must be the correct thing to do”?

        Let’s make a simple test: if you were in charge and had the choice between spending some $$ to dual license a GPL package or to pay for the development of a GPL-only system vs paying $$$$ to do it in-house because you did not find a MIT/BSD package that does what you need, what would you do?

          • rglullis@communick.news
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            5 months ago

            If you want to talk about fallacies, here are some good examples:

            we would just handwrite an inferior solution from scratch rather than handle the bureaucracy.

            Bandwagon Fallacy

            If it was so much better, that it justified the price, it would outcompete the free one anyway.

            Failure to understand basic microeconomics


            I did not write 90% of the things you claim I did.

            That is true and at the same time does not contradict my point. The whole discussion is about how MIT-style licensing is not as effective for software freedom as GPL licenses. And because you do not have anything to stand on to make an argument against the statement, you keep bringing points that do not address the main issue. When asked directly what you would do, you refuse to give a definite answer.

            • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              The whole discussion is about how MIT-style licensing is not as effective for software freedom as GPL licenses.

              No one else is arguing about that here you 🤡 That’s just your straw-man.

              • rglullis@communick.news
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                5 months ago

                I argue many people don’t care about “software freedom” and MIT is better for those people.

                Which is completely besides the point of the post and carries no value in the conversation.

                P.S: you are still talking about “other people”. Can you try to make any value judgement and own it? How about “I don’t care about software freedom and prefer to get free stuff”?

                • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  P.S: you are still talking about “other people”. Can you try to make any value judgement and own it? How about “I don’t care about software freedom and prefer to get free stuff”?

                  Why? Because your argument has failed beyond redemption so you need something else to impotently insult?

                  Which is completely besides the point of the post

                  🤡

                  • rglullis@communick.news
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                    5 months ago

                    There is no argument, dear child. There is only a value judgement being made by a silly cartoon and you suffering because you refuse to admit that you do not share those values.

                    Why you need to resorting to name calling and hiding yourself behind “others” just to avoid facing this uncomfortable truth, I do not know.