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.
The MIT license guarantees freedom for developers. The GPL guarantees freedom for end users.
The MIT license guarantees that businesses will use it because it’s free and they don’t have to think about releasing code or hiding their copyright infringement. The developers I’ve seen using that license, or at least those who put some thought into it, did do because they want companies to use it and therefore boost their credibility through use and bug reports, etc. They knowingly did free work for a bunch of companies as a way to build their CV, basically. Like your very own self-imposed unpaid internship.
The GPL license is also good for developers, as they know they can work on a substantial project and have some protections against others creating closed derived works off of it. It’s just a bit more difficult to get enterprise buy-in, which is not a bad thing for many projects.
Not all of us write code simply for monetary gain and some of us have philosophical differences on what you can and should own as far as the public commons goes. And not all of us view closed derivatives as a ontologically bad.
And not all of us view closed derivatives as a ontologically bad.
Please explain how allowing a third-party to limit computer users’ ability to control and modify their own property is anything other than ontologically bad?
If I release something free of restrictions to the world as a gift, that is my prerogative. And a third party’s actions don’t affect my ability to do whatever I want with the original code, nor the users of their product’s ability to do what they want with my code. And the idea of “property” here is pretty abstract. What is it you own when you purchase software? Certainly not everything. Probably not nothing. But there is a wide swath in between in which reasonable people can disagree.
If you are an intellectual property abolitionist, I doubt there is much I can say to change your mind.
Permissive licenses (commonly referred to as “cuck licenses”)
That’s where I stopped reading. 👎
Yeah I don’t think I’ve ever heard that term before in my life and I’ve been doing this for a while.
And I don’t think I ever wanna hear it again.
It’s a term Trump cultists use.
People seem to think that those who choose permissive licences don’t know what they’re doing. Software can be a gift to the world with no strings attached. A company “taking” your code is never taking it away from you, you still have all the code you wrote. Some people want this. MIT is not an incomplete GPL, it has its own reasons.
For example, OpenBSD has as a project goal: “We want to make available source code that anyone can use for ANY PURPOSE, with no restrictions. We strive to make our software robust and secure, and encourage companies to use whichever pieces they want to.”
I don’t get the whole MIT vs GPL rivalry. They both have their uses. If you want to use GPL, go for it. And if you want something like MIT that works too.
Thankfully both exist because I think we definitely need both.
Permissive licenses have their place, a reason Godot engine for games has become appealing is MIT.
It doesn’t need to be MIT, just LGPL
I’ve taken up saying “temporarily free/libre” and “permanently free/libre” instead of the permissive/copyleft, since imo “permissive” has a suggestive positive connotation. Especially to ppl who do not know much about the free software movement
Temporarily free gives the idea that the code will stop being free at some point and may cause misunderstandings. It would be better to use nonreciprocal.
It will stop being free the second a corporation gets it’s hands on it, makes improvements and put’s those under a proprietary license
