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Comment by red_admiral | Hacker News Reader

How does the GPL help a user who doesn't write code themselves?

They have the right to use the code, and they have the right to use improvements that someone else made, and they have the right to get someone to make improvements for them.

They also have the guarantee that the code licensed under the GPL, and all future enhancements to it, will remain free software. The same is not true of the MIT license's weak-copyleft.

As far as I know, all the (L)GPL does is make sure that if A releases some code under it, then B can't release a non-free enhancement without A's permission. A can still do whatever they want, including sell ownership to B.

Neither GPL nor MIT (or anything else) protects you against this.

(EDIT) scenario: I make a browser extension and release v1 under GPL, it becomes popular and I sell it to an adtech company. They can do whatever they want with v2.

By allowing them to benefit from the work of others who do. Directly or indirectly.

I’m not good at car maintenance but I would benefit from an environment where schematics are open and cars are easy to maintain by everyone: there would be more knowledge around it, more garages for me to choose from, etc.

In context of your metaphor: what if we didn't need cars anymore?

Then we would stop checking them into our source control repositories.

Isn't the legal situation the opposite here? Car manufacturers don't release schematics because they believe in "free as in freedom". In fact any interfaces you as an end-user or an independent garage can use and schematics that are released such as the protocol for the diagnostic port, are open primarily because govermnents made laws saying so.

I'm most familiar with the "right to repair" situation with John Deere, which occasionally pops up on HN. The spirit of someone who releases something under GPL seems the opposite of that?

Yes I think we agree? I was even thinking specifically about John Deere but I’ve never bought a tractor so it seemed a gauche comparison :)

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