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.
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.
you are working for freedom.
Which is still working for free.
If you use MIT, you make products (paid or foss) better for everyone, in a sense making the world better.
If you use GPL, you push FOSS to be more prevalent, arguably making the world better in a different way.
What I don’t like is that the title minimizes the contributions of the MIT developers.
I’m pretty sure that I got paid to work on GPL software, and I am pretty sure that said software would never have been developed if I wasn’t going to be paid for it.
What I don’t like is that the title minimizes the contributions of the MIT developers.
It’s not about the contribution. The MIT license still lets people study and share the code. It’s Free Software. The contribution is still there. The “problem” is that those contributions can be taken and exploited by large corporations.
The “problem” is that those contributions can be taken and exploited by large corporations.
You say exploited, I say used. Or on the other hand, you can argue that large FOSS projects like Linux distros are exploiting smaller projects they package, since they don’t share their donations…
IMO there is no issue if the wishes of the author are respected. The authors wishing for companies to use their code is just as valid as wishing to restrict it to FOSS.
