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.
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A lot of people don’t care.
Not everyone wants to deal with that (setting up payment methods, filling tax forms, …)
In addition, as a developer for a corp, I can tell you having to pay for a license would prevent me from using most smaller libraries because the process of getting it approved and paid is too difficult, even if the money is not an issue.
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Which is still working for free.
If you use MIT, you make products (paid or foss) better for everyone, in a sense making the world better.
If you use GPL, you push FOSS to be more prevalent, arguably making the world better in a different way.
What I don’t like is that the title minimizes the contributions of the MIT developers.
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You say exploited, I say used. Or on the other hand, you can argue that large FOSS projects like Linux distros are exploiting smaller projects they package, since they don’t share their donations…
IMO there is no issue if the wishes of the author are respected. The authors wishing for companies to use their code is just as valid as wishing to restrict it to FOSS.
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I disagree. Sure, for some larger crucial projects, companies would pay. But for the majority of (small) projects, we would just handwrite an inferior solution from scratch rather than handle the bureaucracy. The result would be wasted additional effort, inferior features and more bugs.
And even if that was not the case and bureaucracy was not an issue, the question is how much better would the paid for “professional” FOSS software be compared to the free one. If it was so much better, that it justified the price, it would outcompete the free one anyway. And if it is not, then by definition it is better we use the free one.
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Damn, that’a good.
So you wish that all corporations shouldn’t pay their developers at all, because MIT licence exists?
I did not write anything even in the neighborhood of that. Go learn how to read with understanding.