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Max

@zabbeer @mgorny freedom to link software with other software without doing dumb slow workarounds because GPLv2 is not GPLv3 compatible.

eighty-twenty.org/2021/09/09/p

in our era of software that never actually gets “distributed”, GPL is worse than useless for most projects: it doesn’t stop corporations from using software internally (and they only ever use it internally anyway, since everything is web-based) and it hurts good actors by being incompatible with other open-source licenses, including itself.

“just always use GPLv2+”: this + is a statement that I’m willing to distribute under any terms that FSF brands as GPLv4, which requres a lot of trust in FSF, which I don’t have. it also doesn’t solve the problem of linking GPLv2-only libraries with GPLv3-only libraries.

“just always use AGPL”: it’s less useless than GPL, but is still easily circumvented by keeping AGPL code in its own microservice, never seeing the outside world, so never “distributed”.

7 January at 16:11 | Wall-to-wall | Open on im-in.space
2 comments
Max

@zabbeer @mgorny if you want to stop corporations from using your software, just use a non-commercial license, it’s that easy.

7 January at 16:18 | Open on im-in.space
Howard Chu @ Symas

@goldstein @zabbeer @mgorny the point of the GPL/copyleft isn't to prevent commercial use of Free Software. It's to prevent taking what was released openly from being closed. The so-called "permissive" licenses are just a cynical free pass for corporations to steal from the public, nothing more.

7 January at 17:34 | Open on mastodon.social
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