[kwlug-disc] Permissive vs copyleft licenses

[Chris Frey]

On Wed, Dec 09, 2020 at 11:26:38PM -0500, Doug Moen wrote:
> I don't think that the choice of FOSS licence is as important as people
> are claiming here. I am disappointed at the level of sectarianism and
> polarization within the FOSS community about the choice of licence. I
> call bullshit on claims of hellfire, damnation and apocalypse if I don't
> use the GPL and choose a more permissive licence instead. The comparison
> of using a permissive licence with the terrible situation in Belarus is
> very extreme and also inaccurate.

Your post spoke a lot about corporations and business as if we need
them so badly that we need to change the licenses of our software in
order to appease them.

I don't believe that's the mindset of GPL.  The GPL focuses on freedom
first, and if business makes use of it, so much the better.  It is
much more a mindset of "I'll make my own free system, on my own time,
even if it has only a fraction of the features of non-free software.
Come join me."

Would we be where we are today without the GPL?  I have my doubts.

I also think that choice of license is a strategic move.  Not everyone
will pick GPL simply because their goals are different.  If my previous
post didn't make that clear, that was my fault.  Please watch that
youtube video I linked, because it makes a pretty good case for the
pragmatic BSD side.

That's what so fascinating to me, how subtle choices can have major
long term impacts.  And GPL is one of those choices, where up-front
unpleasant sacrifices are made for very long term goals.  Those choices
should be made consciously.  I'm not sure that the companies we are
discussing did that, and got more pain than they bargained for.


> Just as the GPL is less effective than claimed at protecting you from
> bad actors stealing your code and competing against you, the GPL is also
> less effective than claimed at "forcing" companies to contribute source
> code back to the community.

The GPL scares some bad actors away.  That's a feature, not a bug.


> The reality is that modifications to GPL'ed code that you extract
> from a company by threat of lawsuit over licence violation don't have
> a lot of value. The situations where actual value is created is where
> the company *wants* to contribute back to the FOSS community,

Indeed.  More strategy.

I sometimes liken the GPL to IPv6.  Lots of up-front pain for a very
long term goal.  And when that pain occurs, a lot of people reflexively
search for 'how to disable ipv6' (including me).  IPv6 may have gotten
farther with a different strategy, but would it have achieved the same goals?


> So the GPL is just another FOSS licence. There is no evidence-based
> moral reason for choosing it over another FOSS licence, it's a personal
> preference. By and large, corporations contribute to the FOSS community
> not because they are forced to by the GPL, but because they are founded
> by and employ engineers who have made the same political commitment to
> FOSS that I have. Projects with permissive licences are more likely to
> get corporate support and contributions, and may get more contributions
> from the developer community due to the perceived downsides of GPL code
> (ie, I'm contributing to this project but I can't use it at work).

The fact we're talking about this means there is a difference, and a
big one, not "just another FOSS licence".  The point is not corporate
contribution, but a defence against corporate raiding of what we write
ourselves.

How does the author wish to use his code?  BSD is friendly, and
completely non-legal trojan horse (they win you over by sharing
workload, not legal arguments... again, see youtube video).
GPL is the legal fortified city.  I believe both are moral with
the right intentions.


> The GPL is important because it inspires religious zeal in people,
> due to its powerful narrative about making people free from the power of
> evil corporations. Important software has been built by people inspired
> by this ideology. Permissive licences are also important to the health of
> the FOSS community; they are more attractive to libertarians and people
> who are skeptical of religious narratives. And permissive licences are
> responsible for a lot of money being pumped into FOSS software development
> by corporations, which gives us more choice of FOSS software and higher
> quality FOSS software to choose from. It takes all types of people to
> make a healthy FOSS community, so let's try to be tolerant.

You ask for tolerance but accuse others of religious zeal?

Every copyright holder gets to choose the license they wish to use.
Nobody is questioning that.  I'm encouraging people to do it with the
full set of facts, pointing out the strategic nature of the choice.

- Chris