Maybe it's just me but I've noticed that free software (especially of the GPL kind) has been getting lots of hate lately. Is it because of the recent rms debacle? I never noticed it before.
If you did want to control the future of information flowing from person to person, I can think of no higher threat than free software.
Givin that premise, I would expect to see a lot more opposition to free software if large governent and large business intrest decide to consolidate their power and think that open communication is a hindrance.
> The whole Github/MIT licence scene simply did not exist back in the days, it was either closed source or GPL.
BSD-licensed software, and probably also MIT-licensed and whatever non-copyleft licenses there are, has been a thing for a long time. I distinctly remember seeing discussions and opinions regarding copyleft vs non-copyleft open source in the early 2000's. Aside from BSDs themselves, there have been all kinds of non-copyleft licensed software all along.
It might be that more liberal (i.e. non-copyleft) licenses have been gaining more popularity and that the emphasis has moved from GPL to non-copyleft licensing. It might also be that's partially driven by the dominance Google et al. have on tech culture. But as a whole I'm not sure that hate (if it exists) towards GPL-oriented culture follows from that.
As a stab in the dark, it could also be that there's a new generation of people for whom the older days of the GNU project and the free software movement sound somehow archaic or "not modern" now, or there could be some other kind of a cultural shift. People don't always embrace newer trends because of some kind of a clear economical or other direct motive.
Economic interests of the current powers that be might of course be one of those things that affect cultural changes, but I wouldn't necessarily buy it that it's the only reason.
There was also very recently a high-profile issue involving it and a ruby gem used by Rails that caused a lot of headaches for a lot of people, so it's top of mind for many.
I hadn’t heard of this, I assume you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26566925?
Lots of random BS on the internet is getting lots of hatred because the entire world has a metric fuckton of stress on its plate and access to a global platform called "social media" with which to try to vent about it as the only thing they know how to do to get through the damn day.
* Global pandemic and uptick in open source contributions
* Elastic/Amazon
* RMS
GPL's often a point of debate due to the virality of the license. AGPL is significantly more problematic due to the risks that it poses to corporations.[0]
IMO, overall this is a net positive, there's a lot more debate on long-term sustainability for open source, and a significant push for more corporate backing.