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Comment by dmezzetti | Hacker News Reader

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I had a very similar view once, and have since understood that this is mainly a difference in perspective:

It's easy as a developer to slip into a role where you want to build/package (maybe sell) some software product with minimal obligations. BSD-likes are obviously great there.

But the GPL follows a different perspective: It tries to make sure that every user of any software product is always capable of tinkering and changing it himself, and the more permissive licenses do not help there because they don't prevent (or even discourage!) companies from just selling you stripped and obfuscated binary blobs that put you fully at the vendors mercy.

I understand people want to control what happens once they build something. Too often do you see startups go with a permissive model only to go to a more restrictive model once something like that happens. Then it ends up upsetting a lot of people.

I'm of the opinion that what I build, I'm willing to share it and let others use it as they see fit even if it's not to my advantage.

I think the GPL mainly suffers with startups because it makes monetization pretty difficult. Some "commercial" uses of it are also giving it somewhat of an undeserved bad taste (when companies use it to benefit from free contributions while preventing competitors from getting any use out of it).

My view is that every project and library where I can peruse the source is a gift/privilege. GPL restrictions I view as a small price to "pay it forward", and to keep that privilege for all wherever possible.

Fair enough. You'd like to hope that there is a voluntary "pay it back and forward" mentality. But I understand that is a leap of faith with a lot of blind trust.

Copyleft isn't about the software authors freedom, it's about the end-users freedom. Copyleft grants the end-user the freedom to study and modify the code, i.e. the right to repair. Contrast this with closed-source software which may incorporate permissively licensed code: the end-user has no right to study, no right to modify, and no right to repair. Ergo less freedom.

I think it makes a lot of sense for hobby software and non-commercial software. It's just tough to do in a commercial setting for a number of reasons.

So ultimately while good intentioned, you end up limiting how many people can use what you've built.

It's not dictating how you use what you build? It's dictating how you redistribute what you build on top of other people's work.

Ok but I just have no interest in imposing restrictions on how people distribute what I build in such a manner either. That's just me.

What if they impose their own restrictions on people further down the line?

Once it's out of my hands, so be it. The users can choose not to use derivatives.

https://gavinhoward.com/2023/12/is-source-available-really-t...

just a comment on this article, that may be unrelated to the point you want to make: gavin makes a fatal mistake in interpreting RMS intent. he claims that he only wanted control over his hardware. that is not true. he also wanted the right to share his code with others. the person who had the code for his printer was not allowed to share that code. RMS wanted to ensure that the person who has the code is also allowed to share it. source available does not do that.

SAMS does do that. Read my article carefully; it also requires modification and distribution rights for users. See principles 0 and 1.

I disagree as someone who has also spent a huge amount of time on open source software. It’s all GPL or AGPL :)

That's your prerogative. It's just not for me and GPL is basically something I avoid when possible.

> As someone who has spent a fair amount of time developing open source software, I will say I genuinely dislike copyleft and GPL.

GPL: Help the user

MIT: Help some random company screw the users and save money not hiring people.

Then again I see you're a founder at some AI company so I strongly doubt your motives and statement.

I've spent years building something for free with no expectation of anything in return. Perhaps someone just doesn't believe in the GPL and has no ulterior motive for that.

What part don't you "believe" exactly? It's just a license with it's particular use cases. It's up to you whether you find the use case appropriate in your circumstance. It depends on what your goal is.

I've said it multiple times. I don't want to force those who use my projects to have to share their code unless they want to. But if someone wants to use GPL that's up to them. It's a choice.

As somebody who thinks that people currently own the code that they write, I wonder why you're in people's business who want to write GPL'd software.

Are you complaining about proprietary software? I hear the restrictions are a lot tighter for Photoshop's source code, or iOS's, but for some reason you are one of the people who hate GPL as a hobby. Please don't show up whining about "spirits" when Amazon puts you out of business.

I opened the profile of the user and he's a founder of an AI company. I guess that explains.

I'm not in anyone's business just sharing my opinion on GPL. I understand why people go GPL / AGPL just not for me. To each their own if they want to go down that path.

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