Context:

Permissive licenses (commonly referred to as “cuck licenses”) like the MIT license allow others to modify your software and release it under an unfree license. Copyleft licenses (like the Gnu General Public License) mandate that all derivative works remain free.

Andrew Tanenbaum developed MINIX, a modular operating system kernel. Intel went ahead and used it to build Management Engine, arguably one of the most widespread and invasive pieces of malware in the world, without even as much as telling him. There’s nothing Tanenbaum could do, since the MIT license allows this.

Erik Andersen is one of the developers of Busybox, a minimal implementation of that’s suited for embedded systems. Many companies tried to steal his code and distribute it with their unfree products, but since it’s protected under the GPL, Busybox developers were able to sue them and gain some money in the process.

Interestingly enough, Tanenbaum doesn’t seem to mind what intel did. But there are some examples out there of people regretting releasing their work under a permissive license.

  • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
    0·
    19 days ago

    So what is your argument? Who is responsible for the decision-making process that leads to “hand writing an inferior solution”? Why do you think that this at all acceptable and reasonable?

    You’ve been writing nothing but opinion-as-fact and resorting to wild rationalizations to justify your preferences, now you want to couch yourself under the questionable ethics of “it’s done this way and I can not fight it, so it must be the correct thing to do”?

    Let’s make a simple test: if you were in charge and had the choice between spending some $$ to dual license a GPL package or to pay for the development of a GPL-only system vs paying $$$$ to do it in-house because you did not find a MIT/BSD package that does what you need, what would you do?

      • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
        0·
        19 days ago

        If you want to talk about fallacies, here are some good examples:

        we would just handwrite an inferior solution from scratch rather than handle the bureaucracy.

        Bandwagon Fallacy

        If it was so much better, that it justified the price, it would outcompete the free one anyway.

        Failure to understand basic microeconomics

        I did not write 90% of the things you claim I did.

        That is true and at the same time does not contradict my point. The whole discussion is about how MIT-style licensing is not as effective for software freedom as GPL licenses. And because you do not have anything to stand on to make an argument against the statement, you keep bringing points that do not address the main issue. When asked directly what you would do, you refuse to give a definite answer.

        • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
          0·
          19 days ago

          The whole discussion is about how MIT-style licensing is not as effective for software freedom as GPL licenses.

          No one else is arguing about that here you 🤡 That’s just your straw-man.