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Comment by Dork1234 | Hacker News Reader

Re branding a MIT license software and selling a commercial version is a good thing if done correctly. Clearly Zen is not providing any added value.

The key takeaway from this is you don't sign contracts with overly aggressive business executives. I also think Non-competes should be almost completely banned for most employees.

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The key takeaway for me is that a third party is able to use thousands of manhours of someone else’s labor as a basis for their closed source product without having to share their enhancements or pay a dime.

If zig were licensed GPL, the zig foundation would be able to sell permissive licenses to companies that don’t want to share source as a way to fundraise.

As the author of the statement, I disagree. Parent poster got it right: the license is MIT precisely to allow the highest degree of freedom.

Companies that want to profit from Zig are welcome to do so, but in this particular case, we consider connectFree a bad actor and so we crossed the language barrier to make sure Japanese developers would be able to hear from both sides.

From the statement:

    “We can’t in good conscience recommend to Japanese professionals and businesses to make their livelihood depend on a closed-source, superficial rebranding of Zig“

Does the zig foundation have a problem with recommending closed-source superficial rebrandings of Zig or just from connectFree?

Regardless of the legality of a thing, the foundation might of course recommend against using it. Imagine that someone wrote a shitty book (without stealing any content) which ends up as the only result on Amazon. It’s perfectly legal to release such a book and it would be sensible for the foundation to warn the Zig community about the lacking quality.

Just because the license allows anyone to fork it and sell it doesn’t mean that Zig is obliged to endorse it.

It’s fine for the foundation to recommend against certain companies, but it’s inconsistent to recommend against any specific company on the basis of it being “closed source superficial rebrand” if they claim to have no issue with people using their code on those terms.

did you read the description of what happened?

Yes

then I submit that your rhetorical question at the end of your statement is flawed. Maybe consider the question: Does zig have a problem with closed-source rebrandings by companies that cause serious damage to the ecosystem outside of merely forking the code?

It was not flawed nor rhetorical, if their concern is with ecosystem damage, then the fact that the company makes a closed source superficial rebrand should have no bearing on that. Unless they indeed have a problem with companies profiting from Zig.

> a third party is able to use thousands of manhours of someone else’s labor as a basis for their closed source product without having to share their enhancements or pay a dime.

This is my favorite part about open source. Why are you painting it as a bad thing?

There's a difference between using open-source in your work and doing a superficial fork & rebrand. The latter is clearly trying to steal the upside from the creator of the code.

Of course there is a difference, but again that's what I love about open source. You put something out there, and then it has a life of its own. So what if some people come along and try to sell your code with a new name? Good luck to them, I hope they become very rich off my code (are there any examples of this actually happening?). Personally I write open source code because I like writing open source code, not to get rich.

> If zig were licensed GPL, the zig foundation would be able to sell permissive licenses to companies

That would be against the spirit of GPL, which is ideologically opposed to all proprietary software.

Stallman himself has said he approves of GPL/Commercial dual licensing.

It's a good way to support a project - companies don't like the GPL but they also want to spend money on support.

> It's a good way to support a project

I disagree. GPL/Commercial dual licensing is always a game of perverse incentives. Even if you aren't actively crippling the free part of your product you're incentivised to make it difficult enough to work with or otherwise support that companies will be inclined to pay you to do it.

Not necessarily - the GPL is a no-go for some companies regardless of the difference in quality between the free and not free.

Remember that it's not free it's about lawyer approval.

Can you dual license with both GPL and MIT (or other)? Would that make sense?

Maybe, the idea is that a company who wants to use my work can either comply with the GPL and give back that way or financially support the project (and therefore not need to comply).

You could grant them an MIT license, I guess.

FSF isn't vehemently opposed to permissive licenses either (they are merely discouraged), but that is the argument GP decided to bring here.

> Re branding a MIT license software and selling a commercial version is a good thing if done correctly.

GPL does not prevent you from selling a commercial version, only from closing up the source.

Having no access to the source is to direct user determent.

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