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Comment by bayindirh | Hacker News Reader

> Who is MIT a turnoff for?

For me, for example. I personally prefer my foundations on xGPL (preferably V3 and later), because some company or set of companies just can't fork and run away with it.

I personally consider computing utilities and compilers essential infrastructure and their sustainability while being completely transparent are critical for me.

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I'd argue the opposite. xGPL makes it easier for the founding company to just run away with it. We saw it with MongoDB, where it being AGPL means one company can control and unilaterally relicense it. Other examples I'd see of being GPLed doing little to nothing to prevent such shenanigans are any Oracle owned GPLed properties -- Java, MySQL, and VirtualBox all have user-hostile projects and misfeatures added even with the GPL. Conversely, permissive Free projects like LLVM and Postgres have had a lot harder time with one company controlling, because its non-copyleft nature means that everyone has a fair footing in controlling the direction.

The problem is not xGPL, it's the copyright transfer. If you don't force copyright transfer on the patches you accept, you can't relicense a code overnight.

All "xGPL to shenanigans" incidents have underlying copyright transfer problems. Recently, an emulator had gone the same way. They asked for copyright transfer to be able to relicense from GPL, and some folks here have used derogatory adjectives for people who didn't want to transfer their copyrights.

Java -> OpenJDK

MySQL -> MariaDB

OpenOffice -> LibreOffice

Chrome -> Chromium

VSCode -> VSCodium

and so on.

GPL protects my rights.

Ah that is why clang in now loosing the race to being C++20, while two of its major founders are more than happy with C++17 for their OS stacks and main languages on those stacks.

So where are the others stepping in to fill the void reaching C++20 compliance and catching up to GCC and VC++?

But I work for a company, and I want to run off with these things.

Why obeying GPL and sharing your improvements is bad?

RedHat built a company on that model? Provide value and GPL won't threaten your business model.

It’s not bad, it’s just that I’m not allowed to. I don’t like to inflict that on others.

Seeing something useful and then having to do it myself anyway because I cannot use it due to the license is painful.

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