Comment by bcg1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bcg1 | Hacker News Reader

Christopher Allen Webber is a FLOSS hero and in my opinion deserves the utmost respect, although I suspect he is probably too humble to agree with that.

I concur with everything he has written in his post... but one thing I'd add to the points he made is my annoyance with the implication made by many that proponents of permissive licensing care about freedom more than people who use copyleft licenses.

People who really care about freedom care about it for EVERYONE, and licensing that maximizes freedom for everyone trumps the "strings attached" in that regard, that is such a simple thing to see that it challenges credulity to think that someone who cares about freedom could say otherwise.

If you want everyone to use permissive licensing because you want to use free software inside of locked down programs you produce and are frustrated that great copyleft software doesn't let you do that, fine. I can respect that position because I've experienced the same problem. But please get over it and find some non-free solution to your problem, instead of trying to undermine the ideology of people who actually care about freedom just because you are jealous of the quality of software that has that ideology attached to it.

> If you want everyone to use permissive licensing because you want to use free software inside of locked down programs you produce and are frustrated that great copyleft software doesn't let you do that, fine. I can respect that position because I've experienced the same problem. But please get over it and find some non-free solution to your problem, instead of trying to undermine the ideology of people who actually care about freedom just because you are jealous of the quality of software that has that ideology attached to it.

Stop pigeonholing people who disagree with you. I'd like everyone to use permissive licensing because I believe copyright (and more generally, intellectual property) is unjust. Copyleft is only possible in a world with a strong IP system.

Fair enough. I respect agree with your viewpoint, and you're not the one I'm calling out if that's your position. I do however think that from practical standpoint, when compared to copyleft licensing, permissive licensing is a weak solution toward the end that you are seeking.

If you are against copyright, support copyleft, which gives even big companies an incentive to dislike copyright!

Copyleft depends on copyright.

Additionally, my goal is to make my software as widely usable as possible. Using the GPL runs contrary to this goal.

> Using the GPL runs contrary to this goal.

Saying "giving everyone the right to share it" is contrary to the goal of having it be shared widely (aka adopted), is at least a gross oversimplification and at most an absurd statement.

However, RMS sees room for tactically using permissive licenses for the purpose of adoption too, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.en.html

Getting more adoption as part of proprietary software may or may not lead to more overall adoption. Bsd kernel vs linux kernel is a case for gpl leading to more adoption than permissive. GPL says "allow EVERYONE to share it." And in some cases, more people share it this way! Who would have guessed? And it can lead to more people contributing, because they know everyone will have the right to share their work. The fact that permissive code means it could be shared LESS, because it can't be part of software which makes sharing illegal, is kind of across purposes. I mean, if you just care about adoption, a lot of times, you might get more by keeping it completely proprietary and selling the copyright to a big company. Or you might get more by embedding it into worms and phishing emails and running a botnet.

I'm not writing a kernel. The fact remains that if I use the GPL, people will tell me that they can't use it because their legal department forbids it. Alternatively, using it requires approval from their legal team and that requires enough effort not to use my code.

This isn't some theory that you can weasel your way out of using examples. It's based on real experiences I've had.

I was not weaseling out of it. I explained how it can go either way.

And I'm saying it doesn't in my case. Fewer people would use my code if I made it copyleft.

I personally would rather people steal GPL software than go an ideological rampage so they can safely subsume free software into proprietary products. Stealing would be a more morally honest action.

What? Why? So that future lawsuits can force the release of codebases including stolen GPL work?

Because when they convince the world out of their own greed that authors shouldn't protect the users rights, and that the users (not creators) of MIT/BSD/Apache licensed software are free to subsume it without giving back, they hurt everyone.

If they steal the software and use it in a proprietary product, they only damage themselves.

Convincing everyone to not use the (L)GPL does more damage than just violating a license.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com