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Comment by gspr | Hacker News Reader

> For a "real", pro-freedom AND anti-capitalist software license, please consider GPL 3.

I wouldn't say that GPL3 is "anti-capitalist". Rather, it's extremely pro-freedom and forces certain behavior on part of the capitalists that they aren't inclined to partake in on their own volition.

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One problem with GPL2 and GPL3 from an anti-capitalist perspective is that there are lots of ways for capitalists to satisfy the requirements of the license and still make a big pile of money off of it, with the owners of the company pocketing most of the returns. Worse still, the original authors aren't being compensated.

GPL mostly helps with freedoms for the users, which is still very useful.

true

IMHO among the various OS licenses, GPL it's the more inclined toward anti-capitalism. But that's a personal reading.

The intention behind it might be, that doesn't mean that capitalists can't use it as a tool. There's a whole business model in GPLing software and then selling proprietary add-ons (which non-copyright holders can't compete with as they have to offer source) or exceptions to it.

Maybe GPL started as an anti-capitalist license, but in practice it became very much pro-capitalist. It got to the point that GPLv3 and AGPLv3 were split into two licenses to satisfy capitalists.

Among various properly written and practical open source licenses Parity license is probably the most anti-capitalist one.

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