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.
GPL means big corporations just won’t use it. If they have to make their software open source, they will just search for an alternative or make their own.
GPL means big corporations just won’t use it.
Great. No corporation is working on software for the freedom of its users.
they will just search for an alternative or make their own.
Or pay the developer to dual license, which can and should be the preferred way for FOSS developers to fund their work?
Great. No corporation is working on software for the freedom of its users
A lot of people don’t care.
Or pay the developer to dual license, which can and should be the preferred way for FOSS developers to fund their work?
Not everyone wants to deal with that (setting up payment methods, filling tax forms, …)
In addition, as a developer for a corp, I can tell you having to pay for a license would prevent me from using most smaller libraries because the process of getting it approved and paid is too difficult, even if the money is not an issue.
Not everyone wants to deal with that (setting up payment methods, filling tax forms, …)
So you wish that all corporations shouldn’t pay their developers at all, because MIT licence exists?
You answer are reasonable justifications for why MIT is used, but they also work pretty well to illustrate the title of the post: If you are doing MIT, you are working for free. If you are working with GPL, you are working for freedom.
