cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44059967
for those not familiar with Mark Pilgrim, he is/was a prolific author, blogger, and hacker who abruptly disappeared from the internet in 2011.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/968527
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44059967
for those not familiar with Mark Pilgrim, he is/was a prolific author, blogger, and hacker who abruptly disappeared from the internet in 2011.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/968527
This is a vast downgrade; stripping the GPL is an obvious attempt at nuking open source by bad faith actors. See what’s happening with AOSP, which would be impossible under GPL.
The day GPL stops being used is the day every major tech company will start slowly but surely closing their code down until open source is completely dead
Yeah, personally I don’t really like the GPL* (for stuff that isn’t actively of interest to companies), but this kind of stripping the GPL from an existing project is just, gross. Definitely seems like an active attempt to nuke it and take it over.
(*because I like it when other open source people can use a given piece of code e.g. I wrote, and I’m not particularly picky about whether they agree with me on what specific form of open source is best; wanna use my MIT or public domain code in a GPL project? go for it!)
(s/open source/free software/g if you’re one of the “open source isn’t REAL FREE SOFTWARE!!!” people; I use the terms interchangeably, bite me)
(also I get using the GPL for stuff that companies would actively want to take over. Like, apparently, this project.)
– Frost
What is happening with AOSP has nothing to do with the license. This project is not being developed by the community, but by Google for Google’s money, and Google can do whatever it wants with it. It’s silly to be offended by this. Anyone who is dissatisfied can fork the project and do whatever they want with it, if they can manage *(well, no, without Google’s resources, this is of course unrealistic).