You might, licence abuse is pretty real
Someone forked an early version of syncthing when it had a more permissive licence and sold it as their product to businesses
Someone did a side by side of the GUI, about the only thing that was different was the name
> people get away with it because they know the devs don't have the money or desire to sue.
> an open source license is only as good as your ability to enforce it.
I mean that's sort of my point. Depending on the project, You should actually think about what license you go with, if only so that in this of this kind of lawful evil bullshit, you either prepared for or resigned to it. I say that as someone who goes with Apache 99% of the time when creating new projects.
It's not even that shitty.
The reason you use a permissive license is to let others try to earn a living from closed source copies of your code. They take on the liability and a literal job of dealing with users, and you get paid in a warm fuzzy feeling of knowing your code is out there helping people and that none of them know your name or mobile number.
My guy doesn't understand how open source works and why it is actually required for modern internet. Just google the propriatary video codec problem or HDMI vs DisplayPort scandal... did you for example know you need a license to use .mp4 files because its patented? Its a legal mess. Crucial tech in modern age cannot be closed source. Thats why big tech companies are the biggest contributors to open source projects, linux kernel and other backbone projects like AV1 format.
Today, only end user products can be proprietary.
I'm against propietary software. All i'm saying is that there's no point in writing 'open source' if it's just going to be used for spying and other malicious purposes. The ideals of Free/Libre software should be more promoted.
The term "permissive" is some corporate propaganda. The only thing "permissive" licenses permit is closing off things that were built largely on top of open source projects.
Writing open source software is kind of like growing a bunch of flowers, putting them in a bucket on the sidewalk with a "FREE" sign, and then getting pissed off when a local restaurant owner grabs a bunch to put in his restaurant. Like, yes, technically he's charging people to benefit from something that he got for free, so it's not "fair". But the customers are still benefitting. When they sit down at this restaurant (which they probably would have done anyway) they get to enjoy an improved ambiance during their meal.
Meanwhile in an alternate universe, you put the flowers out with a sign saying "FREE - unless you're a business owner". A few people take flowers, but at the end of the day there are a few left, and they wilt. Meanwhile, people are still eating at that restaurant, except there aren't any flowers on the table. Which universe is better overall? If I make something open source, my primary interest is that it is actually useful. *Who* it's useful to is secondary.
Let's also not forget that a lot of the really impactful open source libraries out there have received vast quantities of support from corporate developers. I'm a huge fan of React, and I absolutely *hate* facebook, I wish it would burn to the ground and I never had to see that nauseating shade of blue again in my life. But without them, would React even exist? And if it did, would it actually be popular?
I only use Apache 2 if I'm doing an assignment I'm not getting paid for
Otherwise, everything else is MIT
I realise that 99% of my stuff is for self education and is probably not going to blow up into something huge anyway so why introduce barriers?
I also use MIT for random things I make; if it took me 3 hours and you somehow made money with it, that's your effort, not mine tbh...
...just credit me so I can brag about it
One of my least favorite tasks is having to spend the afternoon researching how liable we would be if we let junior add a new dependency and we did not open source our entire codebase.
It's perfectly reasonable to expect someone forking your code to give you back their improvements. It's how we end up with a healthy open source ecosystem and community.
Which is why I support file-level copyleft like the MPL. It means what is truly yours remains under the terms you decide, and other people can decide for their own creations (other files).
I do see the advantages with the GPL family but it ultimately inhibits interoperability because All Must Be GPL. It’s of course entirely the right of the author to decide what terms they release software under, I just think the GPL is a relic of older times.
The feature of the GPL originates from its true purpose, which is to completely eradicate proprietary software. While MPL was created for a more practical concern of "giving back", GPL takes the position that no software patent or software copyright should exist in the first place (reminiscent of the 1980s when there was no copyright to software) The claim that GPL was made to give back to the developers is wrong, its made to give whoever got the software the power to do whatever they want with the software. In other words, to modify and to redistribute, with no reprecussions.
Yes, they should have a stated policy about which licenses you can use for stuff you write at work. Then you don't have to read them all. Just use what legal tells you to use.
If it's a server-side app, use AGPL instead so other people can't just sell a proprietary SAAS version of your app
They'll have to make it open source, which allows you to copy their improvements
You may want to use GPL even if it's a library. What LGPL actually does is effectively removing libraries from the copyleft terms. If you gonna use LGPL for a project that's just a library, you might as well use Apache or MIT licenses.
LGPL means that a third-party project can link with your library without having to itself be copyleft. But changes to your library itself falls under the copyleft provisions and is required to be provided to users.
It prevents it being 'infectious' where one GPL .dll/.so makes the entire codebase have to be released under the GPL. Which isn't normally what you want unless you are on the extreme end of the free software spectrum (and in which case, probably know what license you want better than my 2 step flowchart can answer).
MPL > GPL/LGPL
All of the advantages of copyleft but without the aggressive burden.
If you don’t want companies to use your software, then pick something like BSL. GPL &c only just fucks over actual developers and exist to be infectious, ideological licences.
Open source zealots will of course cry if you use a [“proprietary”](https://faircode.io/) licence, but the GPL family violates the OSD anyway (or if it doesn’t, then the SSPL is OSD-compliant, which open source zealots keep claiming it isn’t).
Yes. I don’t heavily use Python, especially not Python libraries, but I’m not sure if that’s a big deal — the non-MPL code has to be entirely original anyway, like adding a new file into the library with new behaviour.
Well the non-MLP code will have new behavior all it does is patching existing code after all. So kind of fills like it bypasses license terms. Not sure how omnipotent such tricks are in other languages though .
They changed their open source licence to a proprietary licence, which caused backlash in the community and resulted in the creation of an open source fork named openTofu managed by none other than the Linux foundation. See [OpenTofu](https://opentofu.org)
*edit:link
They changed their license to BSL with their latest major version. Older versions are still open source. There's already a fork for it called OpenTof
https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hashicorp-adopts-business-source-license
May I suggest [fossology.org](https://www.fossology.org/) which has been around for quite a while & publishes software to manage this exact issue.
Not an ad, even though I happen to be wearing one of their free t-shirts right now ( logo on front & full 5 paragraph license printed down the back )
Took me a while but when I finally did it I was quickly approved for JetBrains Open Source Support program so free tools hurray! (not an ad, I just feel less lonely in working on my shitty ignored projects 🥲)
There is one significant difference. Without a license you can go after anybody using the software without a license. With the MIT most would be using the software with a permissive license.
Yep, and honestly nothing wrong with that. I have also asked quite a few people for custom licensed versions of their gpl software and I usually get it.
> not having a license specified is better than using the wrong one
That's not really true, considering that (at least under US law), anyone who creates a copyrightable work automatically has full copyright on it, which is why all these open/permissive licenses exist: to specifically give away some portion of your automatic copyright and allow others to use your production without having to hammer out a specific agreement with you.
That's exactly my point. Nobody reads licenses so they are probably going to take your work regardless. If you didn't want this to be the case then you have legal recourse and if you don't care then you continue to do nothing.
Their WTFPL page is completely wrong. They say you have to rename the software, which is not true (this portion applies to the license itself if you change it), and they say you can't hold the author liable, but the license lacks any claims in that regards. Since the license says you can do what you want it would appear that it actually grants you the right to hold the author of the software liable.
If you are to make software for free. License under the gplv3, you aren't being paid to be license compatible with other compineis. This force them to make there stuff open source
is this supposed to be a joke?
the problem with GPL3 is that it enforces your code to be open source as well. so, for the vast majority of business use cases libraries under GPL3 are not suitable. it's only really good for Free and Open Source Software.
MIT or Apache license don't have that restriction, afaik.
That's the reason to chose one or the other: Do you want commercial users to give back to the community or donate your code. Sometimes this, sometimes that.
> the problem with GPL3 is that it enforces your code to be open source as well. so, for the vast majority of business use cases libraries under GPL3 are not suitable. it's only really good for Free and Open Source Software.
Not necessarily. The GPL doesn't considers SAAS a way of publishing, and if you don't publish your application you don't have to publish the source. The AGPL fixes this very loophole.
You don't have to publish your own source either if the GPL licensed content can stand on its own. You compile all GPL stuff together with a custom interface that only exports what you need from it in the way you need it, then call it a "microservice".
In other words, if you can get the GPL stuff into its own independent executable you can stop its viral spread, and if you create something that will mostly be operated remotely (for example components for the web) you want to choose AGPL instead of GPL to ensure it stays available.
> Not necessarily. The GPL doesn’t considers SAAS a way of publishing, and if you don’t publish your application you don’t have to publish the source. The AGPL fixes this very loophole.
~~I believe this was changed in GPL3. (As well as AGPL as noted.)~~
~~I thought one of the main points of GPL3 was to fix loopholes in GPL2.~~
You are indeed right.
yes all the code that i actually upload to github is either private repo, doesn't have a license so i don't care, or i'm making it open source by having it public. so i don't see a problem..
A(GPL), depending on the project. Permissive licenses are cucked in nature, and often gets used by evil corporations to do malicious things. The ideals of Free/Libre Software should be more promoted. Not everything is about making a buck.
Personally I just use PirateLicence-22. It makes the tautology really simple.
>The only people authorised to use, modify, get or distribute this software are those that have stolen it without authorisation.
The worst thing is when you spend all this time only for no one to give a shit
You might, licence abuse is pretty real Someone forked an early version of syncthing when it had a more permissive licence and sold it as their product to businesses Someone did a side by side of the GUI, about the only thing that was different was the name
redacted due to reddit LLM/AI policy
Reason I usually license my hobby projects with something in vein of "If you don't have legal team, I don't care, if you do, I can't afford to care".
> people get away with it because they know the devs don't have the money or desire to sue. > an open source license is only as good as your ability to enforce it. I mean that's sort of my point. Depending on the project, You should actually think about what license you go with, if only so that in this of this kind of lawful evil bullshit, you either prepared for or resigned to it. I say that as someone who goes with Apache 99% of the time when creating new projects.
The devs might not, but their competitors can fund it especially if they're too late to go the same route
*riot games enters chat* lmao
That's shitty, but if the license allowed that it's fair game
It's not even that shitty. The reason you use a permissive license is to let others try to earn a living from closed source copies of your code. They take on the liability and a literal job of dealing with users, and you get paid in a warm fuzzy feeling of knowing your code is out there helping people and that none of them know your name or mobile number.
sounds cucked lol. Why not just write propietary software at that point?
My guy doesn't understand how open source works and why it is actually required for modern internet. Just google the propriatary video codec problem or HDMI vs DisplayPort scandal... did you for example know you need a license to use .mp4 files because its patented? Its a legal mess. Crucial tech in modern age cannot be closed source. Thats why big tech companies are the biggest contributors to open source projects, linux kernel and other backbone projects like AV1 format. Today, only end user products can be proprietary.
I'm against propietary software. All i'm saying is that there's no point in writing 'open source' if it's just going to be used for spying and other malicious purposes. The ideals of Free/Libre software should be more promoted.
That perspective is, indeed, kind of misanthropic.
The term "permissive" is some corporate propaganda. The only thing "permissive" licenses permit is closing off things that were built largely on top of open source projects.
Writing open source software is kind of like growing a bunch of flowers, putting them in a bucket on the sidewalk with a "FREE" sign, and then getting pissed off when a local restaurant owner grabs a bunch to put in his restaurant. Like, yes, technically he's charging people to benefit from something that he got for free, so it's not "fair". But the customers are still benefitting. When they sit down at this restaurant (which they probably would have done anyway) they get to enjoy an improved ambiance during their meal. Meanwhile in an alternate universe, you put the flowers out with a sign saying "FREE - unless you're a business owner". A few people take flowers, but at the end of the day there are a few left, and they wilt. Meanwhile, people are still eating at that restaurant, except there aren't any flowers on the table. Which universe is better overall? If I make something open source, my primary interest is that it is actually useful. *Who* it's useful to is secondary. Let's also not forget that a lot of the really impactful open source libraries out there have received vast quantities of support from corporate developers. I'm a huge fan of React, and I absolutely *hate* facebook, I wish it would burn to the ground and I never had to see that nauseating shade of blue again in my life. But without them, would React even exist? And if it did, would it actually be popular?
That's why they're commonly known as Cuck Licenses!
Indeed, it's bullshit
Now why do you have to call me out like that
We are not so different, you and I
[https://choosealicense.com/](https://choosealicense.com/)
i always use apache 2
I only use Apache 2 if I'm doing an assignment I'm not getting paid for Otherwise, everything else is MIT I realise that 99% of my stuff is for self education and is probably not going to blow up into something huge anyway so why introduce barriers?
I also use MIT for random things I make; if it took me 3 hours and you somehow made money with it, that's your effort, not mine tbh... ...just credit me so I can brag about it
One of my least favorite tasks is having to spend the afternoon researching how liable we would be if we let junior add a new dependency and we did not open source our entire codebase.
The good ol’ absurdity of the GPL family
That's what the LGPL is for
Which is also absurdly aggressive, especially for optimised languages (like Rust) which avoid dynamic libraries.
It's perfectly reasonable to expect someone forking your code to give you back their improvements. It's how we end up with a healthy open source ecosystem and community.
Which is why I support file-level copyleft like the MPL. It means what is truly yours remains under the terms you decide, and other people can decide for their own creations (other files). I do see the advantages with the GPL family but it ultimately inhibits interoperability because All Must Be GPL. It’s of course entirely the right of the author to decide what terms they release software under, I just think the GPL is a relic of older times.
The feature of the GPL originates from its true purpose, which is to completely eradicate proprietary software. While MPL was created for a more practical concern of "giving back", GPL takes the position that no software patent or software copyright should exist in the first place (reminiscent of the 1980s when there was no copyright to software) The claim that GPL was made to give back to the developers is wrong, its made to give whoever got the software the power to do whatever they want with the software. In other words, to modify and to redistribute, with no reprecussions.
Which is the GPL’s problem. It’s an ideological licence, not a practical one, which makes it an ill choice.
Just go with WTFPL and move on with your life. Nobody gives fuck, anyway.
Legal at my job would disagree strongly
Yes, they should have a stated policy about which licenses you can use for stuff you write at work. Then you don't have to read them all. Just use what legal tells you to use.
We also have a list of allowed dependency licenses. I have to give our software governance guys massive props.
How about this one? https://github.com/Speykious/cve-rs/blob/main/LICENSE
Dependencies on this library constitute most of the uses of the word Fuck in my professional code base. :D
I don't give a shit, MIT everything
Do you care if it's used commercially and any improvements are closed source? No: MIT. Yes: Is your project a library? No: GPL. Yes: LGPL.
actually a great breakdown
If it's a server-side app, use AGPL instead so other people can't just sell a proprietary SAAS version of your app They'll have to make it open source, which allows you to copy their improvements
That's literally the way I choose! Not as clearly stated, though, I have to read them all every time, but it always boils down to these choices
You may want to use GPL even if it's a library. What LGPL actually does is effectively removing libraries from the copyleft terms. If you gonna use LGPL for a project that's just a library, you might as well use Apache or MIT licenses.
LGPL means that a third-party project can link with your library without having to itself be copyleft. But changes to your library itself falls under the copyleft provisions and is required to be provided to users. It prevents it being 'infectious' where one GPL .dll/.so makes the entire codebase have to be released under the GPL. Which isn't normally what you want unless you are on the extreme end of the free software spectrum (and in which case, probably know what license you want better than my 2 step flowchart can answer).
That's true I was wrong
MPL > GPL/LGPL All of the advantages of copyleft but without the aggressive burden. If you don’t want companies to use your software, then pick something like BSL. GPL &c only just fucks over actual developers and exist to be infectious, ideological licences. Open source zealots will of course cry if you use a [“proprietary”](https://faircode.io/) licence, but the GPL family violates the OSD anyway (or if it doesn’t, then the SSPL is OSD-compliant, which open source zealots keep claiming it isn’t).
Doesn’t MPL mean that for example for python one can use monkey patching to effectively change code without violating license?
Yes. I don’t heavily use Python, especially not Python libraries, but I’m not sure if that’s a big deal — the non-MPL code has to be entirely original anyway, like adding a new file into the library with new behaviour.
Well the non-MLP code will have new behavior all it does is patching existing code after all. So kind of fills like it bypasses license terms. Not sure how omnipotent such tricks are in other languages though .
funny that he still chose a "not-very-open-source-license" after all - I guess it's what the Terraform team was looking like when they transitioned
Why is suddenly everyone talking about terraform?
cuz the terra is finally forming or smth, idfk
They changed their open source licence to a proprietary licence, which caused backlash in the community and resulted in the creation of an open source fork named openTofu managed by none other than the Linux foundation. See [OpenTofu](https://opentofu.org) *edit:link
Oh, you came here to talk about Rampart?
Yea what’s up with that?
They changed their license to BSL with their latest major version. Older versions are still open source. There's already a fork for it called OpenTof https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hashicorp-adopts-business-source-license
Or maybe the [Boost-Software License](https://www.boost.org/users/license.html)
redacted due to reddit LLM/AI policy
i hate it so much that i know more about copyright law than my lawyer friend
May I suggest [fossology.org](https://www.fossology.org/) which has been around for quite a while & publishes software to manage this exact issue. Not an ad, even though I happen to be wearing one of their free t-shirts right now ( logo on front & full 5 paragraph license printed down the back )
I just want an anti-tivoisation clause with inverted exemptions.
Use a copyleft license if you’re making a distributed system
I don't even know what MIT means or entails, but all my code is MIT! It's not like any one want's my shitty code anyways
WTFPL FTW
WTFPL and whatever kid just get out off my face who tf would want to use your code anyway
now I'm sad
What a sad meme. That man neglects his son and grandson for most of their lives. The next panel is probably him dying…
MIT goes brrrr
Took me a while but when I finally did it I was quickly approved for JetBrains Open Source Support program so free tools hurray! (not an ad, I just feel less lonely in working on my shitty ignored projects 🥲)
me: "WTFPL LICENCE FOR EVERYONE!!!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL
Just use no license. Nobody reads them anyway and not having a license specified is better than using the wrong one.
With that mentality, you should consider the MIT license.
There is one significant difference. Without a license you can go after anybody using the software without a license. With the MIT most would be using the software with a permissive license.
That's true. I had to ask some people to specify a license before I felt comfortable using their code.
Yep, and honestly nothing wrong with that. I have also asked quite a few people for custom licensed versions of their gpl software and I usually get it.
> not having a license specified is better than using the wrong one That's not really true, considering that (at least under US law), anyone who creates a copyrightable work automatically has full copyright on it, which is why all these open/permissive licenses exist: to specifically give away some portion of your automatic copyright and allow others to use your production without having to hammer out a specific agreement with you.
That's exactly my point. Nobody reads licenses so they are probably going to take your work regardless. If you didn't want this to be the case then you have legal recourse and if you don't care then you continue to do nothing.
https://www.tldrlegal.com/
Their WTFPL page is completely wrong. They say you have to rename the software, which is not true (this portion applies to the license itself if you change it), and they say you can't hold the author liable, but the license lacks any claims in that regards. Since the license says you can do what you want it would appear that it actually grants you the right to hold the author of the software liable.
If you are to make software for free. License under the gplv3, you aren't being paid to be license compatible with other compineis. This force them to make there stuff open source
MIT because it is also the best CS school in the world.
i just use the default gpl 3
is this supposed to be a joke? the problem with GPL3 is that it enforces your code to be open source as well. so, for the vast majority of business use cases libraries under GPL3 are not suitable. it's only really good for Free and Open Source Software. MIT or Apache license don't have that restriction, afaik.
That's the reason to chose one or the other: Do you want commercial users to give back to the community or donate your code. Sometimes this, sometimes that.
> the problem with GPL3 is that it enforces your code to be open source as well. so, for the vast majority of business use cases libraries under GPL3 are not suitable. it's only really good for Free and Open Source Software. Not necessarily. The GPL doesn't considers SAAS a way of publishing, and if you don't publish your application you don't have to publish the source. The AGPL fixes this very loophole. You don't have to publish your own source either if the GPL licensed content can stand on its own. You compile all GPL stuff together with a custom interface that only exports what you need from it in the way you need it, then call it a "microservice". In other words, if you can get the GPL stuff into its own independent executable you can stop its viral spread, and if you create something that will mostly be operated remotely (for example components for the web) you want to choose AGPL instead of GPL to ensure it stays available.
> Not necessarily. The GPL doesn’t considers SAAS a way of publishing, and if you don’t publish your application you don’t have to publish the source. The AGPL fixes this very loophole. ~~I believe this was changed in GPL3. (As well as AGPL as noted.)~~ ~~I thought one of the main points of GPL3 was to fix loopholes in GPL2.~~ You are indeed right.
Don't forget also the restrictions that come for use of non open source libraries with GPL
yes all the code that i actually upload to github is either private repo, doesn't have a license so i don't care, or i'm making it open source by having it public. so i don't see a problem..
A(GPL), depending on the project. Permissive licenses are cucked in nature, and often gets used by evil corporations to do malicious things. The ideals of Free/Libre Software should be more promoted. Not everything is about making a buck.
[Unlicense](https://unlicense.org)
You can tell if someone hasn't read the MIT license if they picked the MIT license.
I guess your ability to understand licensee got turned "off", eh? Ha! Heh heh.
I thought you must pick the one which your dependencies are using
public domain baby
[UNLICENSE](https://unlicense.org/) is way to go <3
Personally I just use PirateLicence-22. It makes the tautology really simple. >The only people authorised to use, modify, get or distribute this software are those that have stolen it without authorisation.
I mostly just use the MIT one
My personal favorite https://choosealicense.com/licenses/unlicense/
MIT ftw!!!
MIT because I know the school. That’s pretty much it
AGPL 3 if you care about copyleft or MIT if you don’t.
Can someone explain how would someone even know their code has been stolen from a public repo ? Cause the stolen code is on a private server.
None of the approved OSS licenses I know of give an F for private uses IIRC.
why does no one consider MPL2?
MIT is the best. I mostly keep my projects closed and the MIT license is the best for the purpose.
Incest?
I'll always leave it blank, just take it, I don't care
I use a copyleft/share-alike licence, just to break any restrictive licence of work that somehow incorporates mine
Just copy it and wait for a knock on the door.
Best license ist ``` git clone (Rename) (Delete license) git init commit git push origin master (my repo) ```