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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

>The original stance of the open source crowd.....

>The proliferation of "give everything away for free" MIT/BSD/Apache licenses...

Interesting how the world have changed. The so called GPL preference, or GPL > GPLv3 > AGPL among Open source crowd is a recent thing. Arguably in the last 15 to 20 years. Both BSD and MIT dates back before GPL. And you will see far more people prefer BSD and MIT in the 90s and 00s.

I have also long argued that the license preference among generation has somewhat a linkage to political shift in spectrum. Likely to do with Tech, now known as Big tech taking advantage. And it used to be very cool if your OSS project get used by a big company, until it is not.

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> Interesting how the world have changed. The so called GPL preference, or GPL > GPLv3 > AGPL among Open source crowd is a recent thing. Arguably in the last 15 to 20 years. Both BSD and MIT dates back before GPL. And you will see far more people prefer BSD and MIT in the 90s and 00s.

Back when I was getting started in the mid-90s, GPL and LGPL were kind of the default. BSD and MIT were used for certain projects, like the BSDs and X11 of course, but the goal back then was to build up a large library of open source (then, "free software") as viable alternatives to proprietary software, and the GPL was the easiest way to do that and ensure it remained free.

It was the rise of Rails, and the attracting of commercial programmers and startup bros to open source in the '00s, that motivated the historical preference for BSD and MIT licenses.

As a BSD developer from the 90s, that does not reflect my experience.

We wanted our code to be as widely used as possible. It’s really not any more complicated than that.

There was always tension between the folks that shipped GPL software and folks that shipped BSD/MIT software, but the dividing line was not whether or not we were “commercial programmers and startup bros”.

It has always come down to questions of what we believe freedom to mean, how we wanted to contribute utility to the world, and whether we saw the use of our software in commercial projects as a loss to ourselves in a zero sum game.

The rise of “software as a service” has changed that calculus for some, and disadvantaged those that sought to build commercial service entities around their open source software. In the areas that I work, it’s made no material difference.

As for Ruby on Rails, I think it’s outsized presence on hacker news might have given you an inaccurate picture of its influence on the broader open source ecosystem.

> It has always come down to questions of what we believe freedom to mean, how we wanted to contribute utility to the world, and whether we saw the use of our software in commercial projects as a loss to ourselves in a zero sum game.

Very well put! I personally believe that "freedom" must include the freedom to do anything you want with the software, even close off your fork if you choose. And I do not believe that a commercial project using my software harms anyone at all, as my project is still there, still available for all. Accordingly, I have always believed in and used permissive licenses. It has nothing to do with corporate profits, and I find it vexing that people make that bad faith assumption in discussions such as this.

Yep. This tinfoil conspiracy theory about these licenses being a scheme by VC backed startups is insane. Only a relative newbie to the scene could fall for that narrative. If you've been on the scene for 15-20 years, you know this is just the ethos, and these various licenses arose out of specific needs, but not opposing ideologies.

> There was always tension between the folks that shipped GPL software and folks that shipped BSD/MIT software, but the dividing line was not whether or not we were “commercial programmers and startup bros”.

I remember the shitstorm Zed Shaw caused when he built something on top of MIT/BSD-licensed libraries and released it under GPL. "B-but that's against the spirit of the license!" people said.

This is a very old argument, rooted in differences in how one believes OSS cooperation is best fostered; through social norms and practices, and/or through legal fiat.

BSD/MIT authors see most proprietary use as a feature — it can drive adoption and contributions that wouldn’t exist otherwise, while generally not directly competing with the original project in the open source commons.

It is considered an opportunity to leverage social mechanisms to garner support and contribution that would otherwise not be available.

GPL relicensing is different, in that it creates a direct rival open source commons with inescapable one-way asymmetry.

The license permits it, but since BSD/MIT authors tend to prefer social norms over legal fiat to sustain cooperation, they don’t see hypocrisy in objecting (even if GPL advocates do).

(I’ve tried to be as measured as possible, but obviously, I fall on one side of the debate, and I’m sure that my point of view leaks through.)

> And it used to be very cool if your OSS project get used by a big company, until it is not.

Working for big companies used to cool, but now they are just all EvilCorps.

I think the companies themselves changed. Google used to be much less evil.

> And it used to be very cool if your OSS project get used by a big company, until it is not.

Yup. Open source advocates would brag about adoption in enterprise. They would incessantly argue about how safe open source is compared to close source and would constantly complain about stupid managers not allowing open source.

Not all of them, but that stance was predominant when I was younger.

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