Hacker News Reader

Comment by StudentStuff | Hacker News Reader

The journey to software freedom has been bogged down for too long by people that drive away large chunks of potential developers & users[1].

If you want to be caustic, we won't stop you, but you can't come into community events like LinuxFest Northwest, SeaGL & such, shit on people there who are writing libre software, and expect us to invite you to come back.

1 - https://www.networkworld.com/article/2988850/linux-kernel-de...

View on HN

I thought the idea was to keep software free, not attract as many people as you possibly can

That is my point, AGPLv3 is rarely used due to the antics of certain free software advocates.

Ethically, there is a huge swath of developers that aligns with writing code under libre licenses, but gets turned off when they see our community filled with people that lash out at them needlessly.

I personally have never considered anything other than the license text when choosing a license, and from my experience, anyone I've worked with chooses MIT because it makes open-sourcing easier. Never have I seen anyone in the wild discuss FSF as a reason for not choosing any GPL-class license, but maybe I'm hanging around the wrong places.

AGPL is rarely used because it is incredibly restrictive and prevents sharing code with other open source projects. The world only has room for one restrictive license and GPL has taken that spot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com