Plenty of companies create, use and release open source software using permissive open source licenses.
When the licence itself and the mantra that goes with it are both hostile to business use, it’s no surprise business doesn’t get involved.
Typically, these big-corporation permissively licensed projects are loss leaders and some other part of the company is making the profit; think Android (funded by Google's ad revenue) or LLVM (funded by Apple's iOS hardware sales, and again Google's ad revenue).
If you look at companies that have successful business models where the income actually comes from the open source software itself (Red Hat/SuSE), you'll find a lot of critical copyleft GPL projects (GCC, Linux, glibc, systemd, Samba, ...).
And I think it’s disingenuous to claim gcc, Linux or glibc are somehow “from” RedHat or suse. Sure they contributions but it’s not like they’re company projects that were open sourced.
>> Complaining about a lack of business involvement in RMS-approved “free software” ...
The comment I replied to says
> If you look at companies that have successful business models where the income actually comes from the open source software itself (Red Hat/SuSE), you'll find a lot of critical copyleft GPL projects (GCC, Linux, glibc, systemd, Samba, ...).
My point is that nobody is paying for RedHat so they can use GCC or the Linux Kernel or glibc, and none of them would "die" without RedHat.
Also, I imagine practically no one pays for RHEL just to get RHEL. They want the certiciation/support/training from RH (some of which they used to provide as a service for their free product).
RedHat is essentially selling a service (support), and to provide that RedHat has a Linux distribution they control completely.
Obviously, but that's because businesses act unethically -- ie, for private profit over public good. They absolutely should be called out for that. Or, more specifically, they should be regulated so that non-free software licenses are illegal or severely restricted.
I think it is OK to just not have copyrights (and also not have patents). And then, there is no non-free software licenses because it is not copyright, so even if they write them they do not have any legal meaning.
Stallman's idea, that practical works you can freely use/modify/distribute/etc but artistic works it is permitted to be a limited copyright (only a few years), might also work, I think (although I am not entirely sure; I think it is probably simpler to just abolish copyright entirely).
I have also seen a suggestion to tax copyright so that you have to pay a annual tax, and can copyright it for up to ten years, but anyone who pays 100 times the tax rate of copyright can force it into the public domain early. I think that can do (and if the government likes to earn money, it can help them too), but still perhaps the copyright should not be applicable for practical works, which instead are freely usable. (Some works may be hybrid, and that is more difficult. One idea is if you can separate the parts easily enough then you can copyright the artistic parts, but if you cannot then it is forced public domain; making the source code of a computer game available may be one way to do, so that you will want to release the source codes anyways in order that you may copyright the artistic non-practical-works of them.)
But whether or not is copyright, there should be a requirement of warning label on commercial products that use DRM, and there should not be laws to restrict circumventing them on your own copies of works/devices.
Without copyright the GPL (or any other license) is unenforceable
This makes zero sense. The companies that are currently publishing copyrighted proprietary software would then be free to take the GPL software, make improvements for their own purposes and distributed the compiled binaries and make profits without providing the improvements back.
As a proponent of permissive licenses I have no qualms about my software being enhanced and used by others without giving back those improvements - but the whole point of the GPL is to prevent that - so a GPL without copyright may as well be MPL or BSD or MIT.
Of course if I write a program I would like that others who make modifications (public) that they would also contribute those source codes too, but I do not like to put in legal obstructions, so you should have freedom rather than having too many laws and obstructions.
Are you suggesting it is morally wrong to earn a profit if it would better serve the public good? How and more importantly who defines public good? A major theme from The Wealth of Nations refutes your point by arguing that the greatest economic benefit occurs when people act in their own self-interest:
> It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
It sounds like you're arguing for a socialism model where a central authority decides how to use capital.
The public good under that definition is rather clear: the total advantage (not necessary capital) that something provides to the entirety of society.
I can see how choosing to act in a less-good way than another obvious way can be interpreted as unethical.
You got it. A democratically controlled central authority representing the interests of working people instead of capital, yes.
I don’t find that unethical. What’s more, I do it all the time—for example, right now I’m watching Netflix instead of doing any kind of public service. I have two kidneys, but only really need one. I use my money to buy stuff for my own usage, instead of donating it all after I fulfil my basic needs.
And if I happened to run a business, I would do the very same thing. So I don’t think it’s my place to be calling people out on things that I do too. Doing things for the community should be held in a very high regard. But being legally forced to do that seems really inappropriate to me.
They exist to let people watch movies/tv, and use tech to provide that service.
Compare that to say HashiCorp who release tools as MPL and then provide further features under a licence to fund the business; Or Percona who provide enhanced forks of MySQL under gpl (because that’s what upstream dictates) but then additional tools under eg BSD license, and provide consulting for either their own or other database engines to fund the business.
Heck my own business is effectively consulting, but I build tools to make my life easier and release them under permissive licenses wherever I can (If I fork an existing gpl licensed tool to improve it clearly I have to use their existing licence)
The income question isn't as easy to answer - my rate varied a lot from roughly what I'd been contracting at for some 'mates rates' clients, up to nearly 4x the price for others - but as is expected it wasn't consistent. It's been a couple of years of pretty steady work at a reasonable rate so I guess the "TLDR" answer is 3-4 years.
Keep in mind, apart from the first 2 or 3 jobs I had (2x government and then one at a Telco) everything else has been 'remote', and I've been geographically remote (I live in Thailand) since before I started this business. I have no doubt this has affected the number of potential clients, but it sure beats commuting into a city every day.
I hope that helps and isn't too much of a ramble. Feel free to email me if you want to discuss it further, my address is in my profile.