More extreme people may see it as a major milestone in “killing” GPL.
At some point the GNU project focused their attention more on leading “gnu + Linux” debates and not so much on developing a stable and secure OS. So now it’s legacy cruft.
What happens if the uutils team says that they're not releasing the source of the latest version but the $CURRENT-5 from now on, moving to a closed source, open baggage model? What prevents them from pulling an effective EEE?
I don't follow this argument. This can happen under GPL as well. Nothing stops the copyright holder from relicensing future versions of the software under a different license. The existing versions already out there under GPL/LPGL/MIT/BSD, there's no take backs, but the copyright holder is free to do whatever they want with future versions.
What would happen in your hypothetical scenario is that everyone would get really really angry with the uutils team and the latest open source version would get forked by the community. The proprietary one would wither and die, because who in their right mind wants a proprietary set of coreutils?
Fundamentally, the choice between copyleft and permissive is simply if you care that someone takes your software and incorporates it into a proprietary package. Clearly, the uutils team doesn't care if eg. Apple makes a proprietary fork of uutils for OS X. And that's their prerogative.
Accepting contributions without a CLA does, because then there's too many copyright holders to do so.
The GPL is an attempt at software freedom by restricting freedoms to have a lever that leads to greater overall freedoms.
In some way it has worked for the Linux kernel if you look at contributions wrt drivers. But I am not sure so much that it worked so well for other aspects
I choose GPL, because I do not code these tools with my programmer hat. I code them on my free time, primarily for myself, to be used by people who appreciate the work went into them and find these tools beneficial.
These tools, while vary in sophistication, are high quality items which are built for their users, and not open to be monetized by another company just because they can build something with or on top of it.
I have no qualms with Open Source software when done honestly. Most of today's Open Source projects are not honest.
Try to deploy a service or compile an Open Source tool solely from the provided source code. 99.99% of the time you'll wish that you land flat on your face, which would be easier and less painful.
I choose GPL, because not only I promise that you'll be able to build the thing I released, I promise that I'll make it buildable with minimum fuss and effort as much as possible.
What I put out is complete opposite of a run of the mill Open Source Software. Free, easy to understand, easy to build, no moats whatsoever. It's a gift instead of a window dressing. It's a free offering with no strings attached instead of "fix our code, so you might get internet cookie points in return". It's crafted instead of produced.
The issue is with GPLv3.
So, companies doesn't like to share their source code in a usable form if they're not against GPLv2 but are against GPLv3.
Companies are being companies. It's not about the license, but allowing others to use their code on their products. So they're after smoke and mirrors, and when their mirrors are taken away, they have moved to mirrors that work.
Am I understanding that right?
But yes, companies are much less interested in people modifying software on devices they sell. It isn't smoke and mirrors, there are just different reasons that different individuals support open source software. And there's different licenses to suit different purposes.
* With the exception of diff3.
The problem with permissive licenses started in my eyes with companies abusing the freedom they provide by creating *ium projects and started to push closed source applications with pseudo-open-source *ium projects. Also the same companies get these software fork it, add a small thanks with a 3pt font, printed to the space between the last page and back cover, and be done with it.
This is not illegal, but against the spirit of open source in general, and harmful on the long run.
As someone said: Open Source is about developer freedom, Open Source is about user freedom.
And developers are users of the software they don't develop, and they're cutting the branches they're sitting on.
On the whole, I am firmly against Open Source and would generally go with Source Available, but this seems like FUD.
First, you need to ship the source of that GPLd binary with the binary itself. Second, no derivative of that source code (and the binary as a result) can have a different license unless you're the copyright holder on that source code.
On the whole, I am firmly against Open Source and always go with Free Software, but this seems like incomplete knowledge.
edit: Added the "Note" section in the beginning. There was confusion it seems.
If you link, or modify the code, then you have some license issues. FUD.
The license states the following[0]:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
The same applies if you're hosting a SaaS with AGPL license.
Sorry, but I'm too old for this FUD thing. I neither have the motivation, nor the desire, nor the reason to do it.
I again edited the comment which lead to the confusion.
Yes, you're right. And you play e-mail ping-pong while trying to find the correct person in most cases. IIRC Linksys got into "warmer than usual" water because of not honoring the offer.