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.

  • glitchdx@lemmy.world
    13·
    5 months ago

    I’m an idiot making a thing, and I need to pick a license. Where’s a good place to talk to people more knowledgeable than myself on the subject?

    EDIT: so my thing isn’t software, i probably should have mentioned that. I am making a ruleset and setting for something similar to but not exactly a tabletop rpg. The ORC license sounds promising, but the legalese makes my brain gray out. ChatGPT tells me to use a version of the Creative Commons license, but ChatGPT isn’t exactly reliable.

    • TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml
      8·
      5 months ago

      Not an expert by any means, but it depends.

      Are you okay with people potentially making a closed-source fork of your code? If yes, then choose a permissive license like MIT, BSD, or Apache. If you do not want people to make closed-source versions of your code, and want all forks to remain open-source, then go with GPL.

      Remember that choosing the GPL means other people, especially businesses, will be less likely to consider your project because that would mean they would have to make their versions open-source, which some people may not want to do.

      EDIT: As always, this is not legal advice and I am not a lawyer.

      • AlpacaChariot@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        5 months ago

        Just a small note that the businesses only have to open source their version if they release it. If they just use it internally then they don’t have to distribute the source code. So it depends on the use case.

    • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
      6·
      5 months ago

      I’ll throw my opinions in here.

      If you’re publishing a standard or a reference application, a permissive license makes sense. What better way to guarantee compatibility than being able to use the reference code in your product. This is what happened with the TCP/IP stack, and it was used in its original form in Windows for years.

      If you’re making something that you want to build a community around, something more akin to the GPL may be more aligned with your goals. The nice part is, you can include MIT licensed projects as part of your GPL project. This means there is nothing stopping you from building your standard with a MIT license while building your community-driven application using GPL, maximizing the reach of your standard while reducing the risk to your community.

      Note that either option opens you to EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish), the GPL option just takes an extra step (clean room implementation of a published standard).

    • AceD@lemmy.world
      5·
      5 months ago

      Wish someone would reply to this guy. I am also, a fellow idiot making a thing.

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      My personal philosophy:

      1. Is this trivially small? Don’t bother licensing. People will just copy and paste regardless of what I do and I don’t care. But it gives you the option to change your mind later. Licenses are irrevocable. (I specifically mean not applying a license and maintaining all rights.)
      2. Is it a small part of a whole that people need to use? LGPL. But take this with a grain of salt. FSF says to prefer GPL.
      3. Otherwise, AGPL. If there was a more strict but also commonly used license I’d use it instead.
    • glukoza@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      3·
      5 months ago

      You sound like someone i know xD

      But I think gpl isn’t limited to software, or is it ? Anyhow, you have different varaites of Create Commons, depending on much limits you put, from 0(nothing) to 4(no commercial use, no remix etc.) they have license chooser on website here

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
      53·
      5 months ago

      Rule of thumb: if your full license text is longer than your actual source code, you’ve probably picked the wrong license.

      • Senshi@lemmy.world
        31·
        5 months ago

        That is actually a really bad rule, though you probably are only joking.

        There are many examples of short, but very valuable code. Just think about anything math or physics related.

        A totally new or even just a very efficient implementation of an already existing algorithm can be gigantic if others need to build upon it.

        And many licenses are verbose not because they are complicated in intent, but merely because they need extensive legalese prose to cover against many possible avenues of attack.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
          2·
          5 months ago

          That is actually a really bad rule, though you probably are only joking.

          No, I wasn’t.

          There are many examples of short, but very valuable code. Just think about anything math or physics related.

          A rule of thumb is not a strict law. I never disputed that there are certain edge cases. What has to be considered but is not on the radar of most people: Threshold of originality. A “valuable” 3 LOC bash script is likely not being able to be copyrighted in the first place. In cases where the work is tedious but not creative, the work may also not be able to be copyrighted (depending on jurisdiction). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow whether a certain jurisdiction protects tedious work or not.

    • s_s@lemmy.one
      23·
      5 months ago

      Sometimes you just wanna get fucked. --MIT

      Sometimes you want to start a beautiful family that makes the world a better place. --GPL

      Match your license with your feelings about the project.

      Just don’t, you know, pick the former and mistake it for the latter because your ego gets stroked. If you pick MIT, you increase your chances of collaborating, but get in and get out.