MIT vs GPL [LWN.net]

MIT vs GPL

Posted Aug 31, 2014 21:39 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091)
In reply to: MIT vs GPL by HIGHGuY
Parent article: Forking instead of fighting

I tend to agree with you, but nowadays many developers don't care that corporations are integrating their code into their products -- in fact, they love it when it happens!

It all depends if you consider that proprietary software is a morally bankrupt thing, or just a mildy annoying fact of life, I guess.

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MIT vs GPL

Posted Sep 1, 2014 14:23 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

That's true that many developers don't care but there are downsides other than the plain objection to using the law to prevent working on the software you use if you have the tools and inclination, many people are chafed when they don't have the same opportunity to profit from their own work, where they are being taken advantage of as free labor for someone else to profit from when there is a one-way flow of work. If the company is just using the code as-is this isn't much of a problem (even in the GPL sense) but I think a lot of people would feel it unfair to be driven out of the market by a proprietary fork of their own work, that they aren't legally allowed to work on, rather than being on more equal footing.

MIT vs GPL

Posted Sep 2, 2014 13:25 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Quite true, but that doesn't seem to happen much nowadays, when free software projects get all the momentum and proprietary forms hardly ever shine at all... Now that many developers are educated about the evils of proprietary software, perhaps.