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Comment by hankman86 | Hacker News Reader

Let’s face it: the GPL is becoming irrelevant and is displaced by permissive licenses. Projects using the GPL are increasingly held back and are losing favour among developers. Like LLVM is a very active and innovative platform, whereas GCC is essentially stuck in its original scope.

Why? Because the world is more complicated than the FSF ideologues want it to be. Developers do not collectively or exclusively want to work for free and live a life of poverty.

Not to mention that the GPL is simply too risky and expensive to use in any commercial context. There are countless lawyers consulting organisations on how to avoid the viral aspects of GPL-licensed code. And since case law is scarce, more often than not the advice will be: avoid the (A)GPL like the plague.

The only meaningful and morally acceptable “copyleft” license is the LGPL, which asks you to give back without being the license cancer that is the (A)GPL.

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> the GPL is becoming irrelevant and is displaced by permissive licenses

Is it really? I've recently switched to AGPL because I specifically don't want you using my stuff if you aren't going to give back. If you want to make money off something, feel free to pay for the initial investment, instead of using my work for free.

> Developers do not collectively or exclusively want to work for free and live a life of poverty.

Which is why I use the AGPL. If you want to make money off my work, pay me.

> Not to mention that the GPL is simply too risky and expensive to use in any commercial context.

Good! At this point, I'd be happier if everyone who wanted to contribut to OSS played in one sandbox, and everyone who just wanted to use OSS for gain without giving anything back went somewhere else.

You’re basically using the AGPL like a “freemium” upselling business model. I’ve got no issues with that, it’s your property after all. Just don’t tell the world that you sign up to the FSF nonsense about software freedom.

And be prepared that this may not work out for you. The AGPL is particularly nasty and even infects across network boundaries (not tested in court though). No one with a sane state of mind will even come close to AGPL software - unless they’re a not for-profit entity.

> Just don’t tell the world that you sign up to the FSF nonsense about software freedom.

...because I want everyone to be able to use my software for free, except if they're going to get paid for my work? Cool.

It's pretty disparaging that there are people on HN who feel confident enough to enter into discussions about software licencing —albeit on a throwaway account— but don't understand that software can have more than one license.

I'd like to think I do understand all sides of this, but I will admit AGPL does give me pause for thought. It makes sense for standalone projects which don't have to be integrated. But at component and library level, when there's so much MIT/BSD/etc on npm/pypi/etc, I don't have to think about it.

Does make me wonder why there isn't an ALGPL: "Use my network-expressed component as you like, but if you alter its source, you also need to redistribute the changes under the same license"…

> Does make me wonder why there isn't an ALGPL: "Use my network-expressed component as you like, but if you alter its source, you also need to redistribute the changes under the same license"…

I'm fairly sure there's a GPL like that, either the GPLv3 or a version of the AGPL. It definitely doesn't let you alter the source for network servers, though, exactly like you say.

I believe you refer to AGPLv3: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html

"It has one added requirement: if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the modified version running there."

Notably, the Canvas learning management system is licensed this way, and all of their JavaScript is unminified so you can download it from the server.

Ah, yep! Thank you.

Yes it is, on IoT space, the POSIX clones competition is heating up, none of them use GPL.

>which asks you to give back without being the license cancer that is the (A)GPL.

fwiw, cancer isn't contagious, so if you touch (A)GPL 'cancer' then you wouldn't get 'cancer'. If you wanted to disparage it, call it license herpes. Or license genital warts. Or license gonorrhoea (and you can flex that you know how to spell it).

Personally, I hope you can be convinced, some day, to see licenses as a tool for building communities. Some tools are appropriate for some communities and other tools for others. Nothing for everybody, something for everyone.

That’s a fair argument to make, even though my counter point would be that first and foremost the (A)GPL excludes a community of developers who need to earn a living with their work. In fact, the FSF will call this “morally tainted”. That being said, the free software purists aren’t a particularly tolerant community.

And again, I actually like and endorse copyleft in the form of the LGPL. So basically a license that can co-exist with others and doesn’t force it’s ideology on other people and their work.

GPL does not exclude a community of developers who need to earn a living to work. Linux, GCC and MySQL do not exclude people who are trying to earn a living from their sweat and toil. The GPL even says they can't impose any reason why people want to use the code whether it's in missile guidance systems, teledildonics, or ad networks.

>That being said, the free software purists aren’t a particularly tolerant community.

Sure the zealots of $BELIEF believe in $BELIEF and want others to do so as well. It's not a surprise.

"GPL is irrelevant, Netcraft confirms it."

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