[kwlug-disc] Permissive vs copyleft licenses

[Paul Nijjar]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 12:17:15PM -0500, Mikalai Birukou via kwlug-disc wrote:
> 
> Let me correct
> 

> GNU and Linux come with an advantage of many people contributing to
> it. When you personally pay a person to write code, may be that
> person will not mind that her work is BSD licensed. But when you
> know that your code is used by those folks (subconsciousness uses
> Forbes' cover image to visualize), they get benefit and you get bug
> requests, then any internal drive for contributing evaporates.

> 
> Advantage of GPL is in a volume and diversity of code.
> 
> > There was never any dispute to its origins such as BSD had to extract
> > itself from (and is now fully extracted from).
> 

> Let's repeat again for anyone who starts public projects. Use GPL
> and some anti-cloud clauses. Interested people will contribute back.
> If a big co comes by, they will have to negotiate, and cut a cheque.
> If you choose BSD style license be ready to be burned by regret from
> inside(!).

And if you choose the GPL be prepared to be burned because nobody
wants to use or contribute to your project.

As I get older and grumpier I increasingly feel that the FLOSS movement
succeeded not because of the licensing, but because it was a movement
(what we call "network effects" these days). If you have lots of users
and enough contributors, you are powerful. If not then you are
irrelevant. If GPL projects can attract the kind of momentum they need
to thrive, then that is great. But it seems easier to attract
contributors (in particular, contributors with deep pockets) for
BSD-style licensing. 

> Situation of code release from some university under BSD is not
> comparable to someone labouring on kernel in their free time, not
> paid to do this. 

I am also sufficiently old and grumpty to feel that people building
kernels in their spare time is not sustainable either. Maybe I am
wrong.

- Paul