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Comment by PoignardAzur | Hacker News Reader

To be clear, the issue is that this code that people produced for free is too free and evil corporations might... what, profit from it more than they currently profit from coreutils' existence until eventually all software is locked and proprietary forever?

Sarcasm aside, I don't see how the existence of this code or its hypothetical adoption would hurt anyone. Ideology isn't worth following for its own sake, there has to be a mapping to physical reality, and any mapping that interprets a rewrite of coreutils as bad because it's too permissive is extremely suspect to me.

Like, what does the GPL infectiousness even protect here? Coreutils is decades old. Are we worried Microsoft is going to EEE it?

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> To be clear, the issue is that this code that people produced for free is too free[?]

No, it is not free enough.

It is indeed paradoxical, but you have to remember that we are not dealing with the natural world, we are dealing with a world with copyright in place.

If the GPL is viral then copyright is a zombie. You can whack it once, but it will never stop coming back. GPL has to be viral because of the zombie-like nature of copyright. It's a hack and a pragmatic solution but defeating copyright for software entirely would be the ultimate solution.

Maybe... AWS release a proprietary source-unavailable CoreUtils that they stick on their VMs. They embrace it! they extend it! And then eventually the average dev needs to use the AWSCoreUtils (source unavailable, restrictive license that you can't sue Bezos etc.) to get anything done as everyone else's bash script assumes it's functionality.

How does the existence/adoption of a Rust version of coreutils under MIT make that more likely to happen?

Because you can't do that with GPL. Any modification to GPL must be GPL, hence available to everyone. That's not the case with non-copyleft.

The application service provider loophole lets Amazon do that with the GPL software today. GNU Core Utils would need to be relicensed as AGPL to prevent it.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html

The AGPL is for services accessed through the network. In the specific example above, it was about a set of utils available by default on a VM, which is closer to what the GPL covers (it's the same thing as the Amazon Linux that they must make available, really)

This specific case doesn't since there already has been permissively licenses alternatives to GNU core utils for years.

instead we have EEE by GNU coreutils on proper POSIX tools and we're forced to install the GNU toolset to make scripts work

Please elaborate on the "extinguish" part from GNU/GPL.

Edit: Doesnt the existence of uutils already contradict that?

"forced to install the GNU toolset to make scripts work" is the extinguish part to my understanding

Yes, but the source is available and anyone can fix the bugs.

1) you can install them no questions asked

2) you can modify them no questions asked

3) thus you can get shit done

4) you can’t keep the changes you needed to make to yourself so the next one after you can start at 1)

I don’t see issues here

> 4) you can’t keep the changes you needed to make to yourself so the next one after you can start at 1)

Actually you can even keep the changes. You only have to share the sources if you are publishing compiled binaries.

See Apple and Sony contributions to FreeBSD.

That's pretty terse, and it doesn't answer my question.

Like, let's extrapolate that you mean "Apple and Sony profited from FreeBSD and didn't contribute back, and that's bad". Let's assume that the strongest possible version of that statement is true.

How does that ever translate to "a Rust port of GNU coreutils under MIT license is bad"? If Apple and Sony haven't contributed to GNU coreutils in ~30 years, they're not going to start now, MIT alternative or not. There's not going to be an Apple executive who's thinking "We've held out as long as we could, but now we're going to need to start integrating coreutils in MacOS and contributing changes back... wait, no, these Rust suckers released a MIT version, I guess we can keep being greedy!".

Companies cannot always do without copyleft dependencies. Even Google cannot write a proprietary kernel just like that (see Fuchsia). For smaller companies, rewriting FFMPEG or Gstreamer is impossible.

The more copyleft code there is out there, the less choice there is for company executives to go for the proprietary solution. As a user and as an employee, you probably should care about that. As a BigCorp executive getting an indecent salary from the proprietary code that your employees wrote but that does not belong to them, of course you will not like copyleft. But most people are employees.

You missed his point. How is FreeBSD harmed by corporations using it? Specifically, is FreeBSD being extinguished ( other than by Linux )?

They are not harmed, it just that billion dollar companies are taking volunteers hard work to get even richer and refusing to contribute back. Now, the guys developing BSD obviously don't mind but many people do care.

Well if the uutils people don't mind and they're writing the code, what's the problem with their choice of license?

I've asked this question too. And the answers I've generally gotten are something like, "you may not feel like you're being exploited, but in my judgment, you are."

I take this as effectively equivalent to "you're unable to give consent" and/or "you don't have agency."

But that's the kind of mindset you're likely dealing with here.

End users are very much harmed.

Its not about profit, that comes second. Its about control. EEE could have started way earlier in history if there was no fundamentalistic GPL. They cant embrace what they do not control via copyright.

We are standing on the shoulders of copy-left giants, while patented nonsense and enshittification is hitting pretty much everywhere.

I think you are ignoring the incentive structure ruling the markets. Without strict control against the next sociopath and the next and the next, its just a matter of time even for uutils to get embraced.

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