beleza pura

you (and everyone else who thinks the gpl is just about contributing back) are missing the point. the main goal of the gpl licenses (including the lgpl) is user freedom. they ensure that you can modify any piece of gpl software anywhere it’s used. if you use a propietary system that includes gpl/lgpl software, you should be able to modify the gpl parts to do whatever you want. say for some reason you’re using a system that includes ai slop in its shell, but the shell is a gpl application. you could just grab a fork of the shell stripped of ai functionality and replace the system’s shell with it

that’s impossible with permissive licenses. with permissive licenses, you could be using a system with 80% open source software and be completely unaware of it, unable to change it as you see fit. from the pov of the user, “permissive” licenses are restrictive; copyleft licenses are freer bc its restrictions are there to forbid the developer from locking down free software for the users

of course companies are going to prefer permissive licenses. they want to take advantage of using free labor enable by open source while keeping the freedom to lock down said open source software in their systems. so, when given the option, they will always prefer to contribute back to software with permissive licenses

and that’s the whole problem here: you giving them the option by creating a copyfree alternative to an important piece of copyleft software. do you think companies would ever comtribute to linux if any bsd was a viable alternative to linux? but the kernel community at large decided to stick to the gpl, so the companies have no choice

it’s true that copyfree software isn’t any less free than copyleft software, and i’m not even completely against using permissive licenses. my issue is creating an mit alternative to gpl software

yeah, unfortunately most people in the foss community are the apolitical/free thinker types who hate the fsf bc it is “too political/evangelist” and don’t want to understand how user freedom is affected by permissive licenses

they have a different view on what freedom means

chill, man. i’ve never said this is consciously (or at all) his reasoning for not choosing the gpl. what i mean is that, collectively, this is what’s pushing the development, sponsoring, and adoption of more and more tooling with permissive licenses

sure, but it didn’t get much attention until gcc switched to gpl v3 from gpl v2 and apple decided to jump ship to it

my point is that competitors to gpl software are always advertised through their technical merits (valid or not), but the point behind their development is getting rid of gpl-licensed software

not sure how it would be more difficult to make money using gpl tools

it’s interesting how the move away from the gpl is never explicitly justified as a license issue: instead, people always have some plausible technical motivation. with clang/llvm it was the lower compile times and better error messages; with these coreutils it’s “rust therefore safer”. the license change was never even addressed

i believe they have to do this exactly bc permissive licenses appeal to libertarian/apolitical types who see themselves as purely rational and changing a piece of software bc of the license would sound too… ideological…

so the people in charge of these changes always have a plausible technical explanation at hand to mask away the political aspect of the change

it’s been a trend for a while unfortunately. getting rid of the gpl is the motivation behind e.g. companies sponsoring clang/llvm so hard right now. there are also the developers that think permissive licenses are “freer” bc freedom is doing whatever you want /s. they’re ideologically motivated to ditch the gpl so they’ll support the change even if there’s no benefit for them, financial or otherwise.

sadly, i think that’s exactly the reason why so many gnu coreutils/libc/compiler competitors keep croping up: people want to get rid of the gpl as much as possible. if they could replace the linux kernel with a non gpl variant they would

not that the people creating the projects necessarily have this intention, but the projects are certainly being picked up and sponsored mainly for that reason