I'm not much familiar with what the OSI is in any specific sense; but yes, "Open Source" has always been a nebulous term that fits the container of who's using it. I like the great point of e.g. JS being the real "on the ground open source" for better and (often) worse; it's provided a lot of good real life lessons on the limitations of vague ideas and why real licenses with hard tooth legal rules are important.
Generally, I think we've seen "why you really do need lawyers." I like ideas like Creative Commons and e.g. the Do WTF you want license, but they're no substitute for grown-up law.
MIT is a do wtf you want license, and all the people who call themselves adults and call gnu children LOVE it. I don't think they are adults, it's usually not adults who use the word.
No one cries "unfair!" or "selfish!" more than a proprietary coder who can't use some gpl code, and the louder they cry the more they themselves advertise how simply correct and necessary that license is.
I've gotten to prefer referring to FSF licenses as "restrictive licenses," which was the name that open source or even the "public domain software" people would throw at them. I'm happy to say that FSF licenses are more like "proprietary" licenses than open source licenses. So when a proprietary coder complains about not being able to use GPL'd code, I just ask them why we can't use all of their proprietary code. They have as much right to steal from the public as the public has to steal from them. Or maybe a little less, due to democracy.
The GPLs restrict software authors from being the masters of their users, without requiring them to be the servants of their users. Since the author is choosing the license, it's a voluntary relinquishment of rights that should never have been given by government to merchants. You choose open source if instead you want to give away the those rights (the rights to obscure functionality and lock people out of their own possessions) to whoever wants them. When Amazon picks those up, don't cry about it.
The GPL is the most free license, because it guarantees the propagation of freedom. The MIT license does the opposite. If I want my code to be hidden, mangled, and exploited to make some asshole in a suit rich at the detriment of the rest of society, I already have plenty of opportunities for that: paid work. All the MIT license is good for is devaluing paid software work in the eyes of the ownership class. In contrast, the GPL simply codifies the social contract that should apply to every social interaction: basic respect via repayment in kind. You got something for free! Why not likewise pay it forward by taking an action that also costs you nothing?
The GPL just asks that you engage in basic human decency. The MIT license declares you a mark.
I think MIT declares you either a mark or a saint.
I use MIT for trivial things like examples, asnswers to questions where you have to declare something or the answer or example is of no value and then why bother writing it.
But nothing substantial. I "selfishly" only want to contribute to the guaranteed for all and eternity pool.
So I don't use or recommend MIT.
But I do think that at least some examples of MIT are the result of the authors being essentially saints. Giving so selflessly that they even give to the devil, making the world a better place only through the mechanism that the most people end up using the best functioning available code. IE it's better that Microsoft sell the use of the TCP/IP stack, than have users end up having to use something else. It was them being better than I think they have to be, and better than I am, but not actually misguided and harmful.
Many uses of MIT do strike me as exactly misguided and long term more harmful than helpful, but not automatically all.
I'm just not a saint myself and don't require anyone else to be either, and I think the world would be at least just as fine if there never was any MIT code but only normal copyrighted and full GPL style.
Realize that as long as you’re using GPL code in some internal application as many many companies do, there’s no requirement to make anything available publicly if the application isn’t distributed.
But the GPL explicitly forbids you from forbidding that person who paid you from sharing the code. If an employee works on a Linux driver that you'd prefer be a trade secret, those GPL imports are going to be a massive problem.
> But the GPL explicitly forbids you from forbidding that person who paid you from sharing the code.
Well, yes. That's the point after all - you took someone else's code, made changes to it, gave it to a third person, so now you can't very well tell that third person "Sorry, that code I gave you is now a secret!"
> If an employee works on a Linux driver that you'd prefer be a trade secret, those GPL imports are going to be a massive problem.
In theory, sure. In practice, it hasn't stopped any manufacturer from distributing binary blobs. Nvidia, with proprietary drivers, is still the most popular graphics card on Linux[1].
So here we see that there is no problem for a vendor to be wildly profitable and have the best penetration of all its competitors even though they are strictly adhering to the license.
If an employee is working on any Linux driver, your business is depending on the success of Linux itself to make that driver economically viable to develop.
If your success depends on building on GPL code and not giving back, then maybe try to find success elsewhere.
[1] IIRC, that is. I last checked the Steam stats a long time ago, they may have changed.
The whole point of a contract is to spell out in enough detail for both parties (and if it comes down to it a judge) what the expectations of a given arrangement happen to be. Plenty of employees won't actively exercise all their rights under the GPL (related: [0]), but that fact is independent of the GPL itself.
> If your success depends on building on GPL code and not giving back, then maybe try to find success elsewhere.
Just 3 lines ago didn't you point out a massive company successfully building on GPL code and not giving back, touting their ability to do so as a pro for GPLv2? Regardless, the quibble wasn't with whether that clause is reasonable (I prefer to release under GPL), but that paying somebody to do something crazy with the code and then not release it isn't actually in your control if the code in question is released under GPLv2; for that to happen you require either trust/luck or a different license.
> Well, yes. That's the point after all - you took someone else's code, made changes to it, gave it to a third person, so now you can't very well tell that third person "Sorry, that code I gave you is now a secret!"
Or you took someone else's code, paid a third party for business-critical customizations, and expect the product you paid for to not wind up in the hands of a competitor. While we're stuck with intellectual property as a meaningful legal concept there's always going to be another way to look at the problem evoking different emotions and notions of what's fair or reasonable.
> Just 3 lines ago didn't you point out a massive company successfully building on GPL code and not giving back, touting their ability to do so as a pro for GPLv2?
No, I did not. I pointed out how strictly adhering to the GPL was not in any way an impediment to the success of writing device drivers.
> Or you took someone else's code, paid a third party for business-critical customizations, and expect the product you paid for to not wind up in the hands of a competitor.
If you don't want your 0.001% of contributions to a product to benefit others, including those who built 99.99% of the product, then don't contribute to it. Put your 0.001% effort into some other product that lets you keep the entire 100% for yourself.
You're effectively arguing that it's unfair that you can't take someone else's labour and sell it on without their permission.
I really don't feel bad for you in that case. It's someone else's labour, not yours. Crying "unfair" because you want to add 0.001% of value and want to keep 100% of value doesn't get you much sympathy.
Especially when, as you pointed out when you referred to my nvidia example, this isn't a hurdle to someone who simply wants to use the GPL software and add their own value into it without violating the license.
It's perfectly possible, just not palatable to people who want the original labour for themselves. NVidia supplying binary blobs aren't trying to own the entire Linux kernel for anyone using their blobl. Someone supplying some proprietary driver, and wanting to keep that driver secret, is doing the opposite.
GPL only restricts one from being a dick. "Unfair!"
If someone requires other terms, the existence of GPL code in no way restricts them from writing or buying other code that is compatible with whatever terms they require.
Anyone crying about that is only crying that they are not allowed to steal something that is already free.
From an authors perspective, do what you want. Don't use GPL if you don't share the single value it enshrines.
It doesn't make you righter or more rational or the GPL wrong or anything like that, and the desire to rent out access to the use of a secret is the most common and least interesting thing in the world, as is the desire to try to present that as being any sort of principle about freedom instead of the crass food-gathering thing that it is.
LOL where's the lie? if you have to send lawyers after someone for stealing something which was free, it's not free. it's just a cult of flatulence inhalers that think that permissively licensed code is breaking their precious rules by declining to sue innocent people for keeping their own work.
GPL breakers wouldn't be breaking GPL if they kept their own work. They break it when they distribute a compiled work that's only partly theirs, and mainly somebody else's, without sharing the source code for it.
You're more than welcome to build on GPL code and keep your own work. Just don't distribute it.
I said nothing about a lie. But you add only anger to the conversation for no reason. I didn't even say I disagreed with you yet you are on the attack right away.
Linux kernel devs are literally unpaid labor working almost exclusively for the benefit of companies and governments with enormous datacenters out in the desert
I don't understand why you care so much. If the principle embodied in the GPL is so stupid, then what do you care about any software written under it? Obviously you can't possibly value or want any software written by any such stupid and filthy hippies.
I don't except Oracle and its GPL ilk love to sue people for millions of dollars and stretch the meaning of derivative work more than a transwoman stretches a miniskirt.
if you dump your shitty code into piles of non-shit code, of course people are going to look at you like you're a degen. especially when they're forced to clean up your mess
The schoolchildren or the copyleft bros? Either way you must be some kind of sicko to suggest such a thing. Sickos always assume everyone else is as sick as them, so it's never a surprise to see them advocate for things like gun control.
Soup kitchen volunteers are the perfect example of nominally good works as self-aggrandizement. I would not be surprised in the slightest if the ones who came up with the Iraq War were regulars behind the counter.
How about its unenforceable self-aggrandizing nonsense about how everything is a derivative work as long as two files were ever in the same room together? Sounds like the easiest way to get the code to the nuclear football--just trick them into touching a GPL file.
Just because a contract says something is a derivative work doesn't mean that it is legally. I see GPL bros as vexatious children armed with lawyers. Like Oracle.
I'm not much familiar with what the OSI is in any specific sense; but yes, "Open Source" has always been a nebulous term that fits the container of who's using it. I like the great point of e.g. JS being the real "on the ground open source" for better and (often) worse; it's provided a lot of good real life lessons on the limitations of vague ideas and why real licenses with hard tooth legal rules are important.
Generally, I think we've seen "why you really do need lawyers." I like ideas like Creative Commons and e.g. the Do WTF you want license, but they're no substitute for grown-up law.