[kwlug-disc] Permissive vs copyleft licenses

[Chris Frey]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 08:23:49AM -0500, Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc wrote:
>   The AGPL was one attempt at thwarting this, but it did not work. So
>   the new defensive position is the one taken by MongoDB and Elastic:
>   license their code so that you can access the source and get the
>   binaries for gratis, but make it so that you cannot take the code
>   and create a competing product. FLOSS purists hate this one simple
>   trick,...

I'm not sure it's a trick.  It's the GPL (and its variants) working as
designed.

The problem is when a single entity owns the entire IP, they are not
required to obey their own license.  MongoDB will get away with this
for as long as nobody else releases a killer MongoDB enhancement
under the SSPL.  Then they will either have to obey their own license
in order to include the feature, or code up their own and fight for
market share.

For projects like the Linux kernel, many people own a piece, so everyone
needs to obey the license in order to get the advantage of the whole.

It's the single-entity IP projects that FLOSS purists ought to be wary of,
not the GPL behaviour.

- Chris