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> Even if some company were to make a closed source fork, who cares?

They can add sufficiently popular functionality to said closed source fork and make the open source original a) obsolete and b) incompatible with the combined ecosystem, and thus deprive the users of a feasible free option.

If the closed fork functionality is superior enough to make the original de facto obsolete then the users have already collectively decided that the tradeoff is worth it.

And if the original can't compete it means the additional functionality was only going to exist because the financial model of the closed fork could pay for it.

> And if the original can't compete it means the additional functionality was only going to exist because the financial model of the closed fork could pay for it.

This completely disregards the fact that the "financial model of the closed fork" explicitly chose to build upon the permissively licensed original.

If the company chooses to build upon free software, they should be obligated to give back to the community from which they leech. Otherwise, they should just build their own thing from scratch with all the money they've hoarded, and keep it closed.

> If the closed fork functionality is superior enough to make the original de facto obsolete then the users have already collectively decided that the tradeoff is worth it.

Users cannot be trusted to make their own decisions about these kinds of things for the same reason that corporations cannot be trusted to be environmental stewards and children cannot be trusted to select a dinner menu or file taxes.

Just because users don't make the same choices you do, doesn't mean those choices are invalid.

users can only choose what is available. the license greatly affects the options that a user can choose from.

You know what would be even better? If the new functionality was open.

The original can't compete because the original author used a permissive license. Do you want to make yourself not compete?

That's not the only reason it would become the defacto standard, and it's naive to claim so.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu...

Users can get a bundled version that slowly breaks compatibility forcing vendors to align with the closed source version.

It would indeed be naive to make that claim, so it's a good thing that's not what I did.

> If the closed fork functionality is superior enough to make the original de facto obsolete then the users have already collectively decided that the tradeoff is worth it.

I'm afraid you did. Users are lazy, and IE and Java on Windows are great examples.

at the expense of the original developer whose work was taken advantage of without giving anything back or paying it forward.

> But I'm sick of the false idea of "you're just subsidizing big business" being promulgated. That isn't true.

All the permissively licensed code that came with my mac disagrees. This is even more true of iphone software: you can technically look at some of the code that comes with it, but you can't modify it.

> you can technically look at some of the code that comes with it, but you can't modify it.

This is equally true of the GPLv2. The attempt to close this loophole - Tivoisation as Stallman called it - only won him a lot of scorn from Linux land and a refusal to adopt the GPLv3!

Fair; I suppose that concern is technically beyond copyleft.

So it sucks to have iPhones?

Yeah, the idea here seems to be, iPhones would be open hackable devices if only more people would use copyleft licences, but in reality Apple would still lockdown their gadgets and just write the software themself if no permissive licence is avaiable.

> in reality Apple would still lockdown their gadgets and just write the software themself if no permissive licence [were] available

This is a common opinion, but seems uninformed to me. The free code helped them get started. They are Goliath now, but the benefitted from not having to do the R&D earlier.

I don’t know if they could have done the R&D. I definitely imagine it would not have been as good as the product they got from using BSD.

Anyway, I believe this kind of thinking is a shallow dismissal of the value that companies receive from starting from Libre software.

"Anyway, I believe this kind of thinking is a shallow dismissal of the value that companies receive from starting from Libre software."

It is a dismissal of the idea, that using a different licence will magically transform the whole industry.

If the code is open, the profit orientated companies don't need to do R&D from scratch. They just take the copyleft source code and make it closed, either by simply not publishing it, or if they care about whistleblowers by rewriting it. Which is easy if you have sources of something working. Even more so today with LLMs.

That is why I am a fan of permissive licences. It is a working compromise for companies who would never consider copyleft code in critical parts of their product.

Compromise implies both parties give something. Can you explain what that is on the company’s side?

Compromise for me is, the concept of open source gets more widewspread. There is no must in giving back. And if you try to force it with copyleft .. you won't get far. I believe history is on my side here.

Android is based on copyleft code and it is far from an open hackable system. On some devices it possible to install an own build but it requires skills and patience so not an option even for most IT professionals. But for most devices there are locked loaders and closed drivers/firmware. I don’t see a copyleft license helping if a business is not willing to participate in open-source.

> but in reality Apple would still lockdown their gadgets and just write the software themself if no permissive licence is avaiable.

That would be preferable to me.

I think if copyleft were more common fewer people would tolerate iPhones.

That would require a far larger fraction of the general population to give a shit about any software license than currently.

If you want to run modified or your own code, yeah, it does.

> There is no possible way for users to be hurt by a permissive license. Even if some company were to make a closed source fork, who cares? The original is still there, still just as free as it ever was.

The users of the closed source fork are harmed. They are unable to use the software to the full extent (e.g. inspect, modify, fix bugs). This is what copyleft intends to protect.

Closed source reduces the software into an appliance and the user into a consumer.

The users of the closed fork always had the ability (if not duty) to inspect the program's licence before using it.

I have a different take on permission license. I offer up what little code I produce under the assumption that anyone can use it for whatever, just give me credit. Why? Because it might result in an interesting collaboration on a project I like. If someone uses my existing code to accomplish something neat and sees who I am, they can reach out to me for more, which I'm open to since it would likely result in some growth for me as an amateur. I'm not particularly interested in making money since I recognize that I am nowhere near that level, yet, but creating a future opportunity seems like a good idea since I enjoy coding.

As a reminder, the GPL (or any other Free Software license, by definition - it's "Freedom 0" in the list) places absolutely no restrictions on users. Its provisions only kick in for those who want to go beyond merely using the software.

> or any other Free Software license

That's not quite true of AGPL (and for this very reason some companies, e.g. in the database provider space, use it for free versions of otherwise paid products)

On the contrary, that's just FUD they spread.

Section 13 of the AGPL (the part that's not in the GPL) explicitly begins with "[notwithstanding,] if you modify the program [and allow users to access it over the network]". Merely using the upstream version is no burden.