this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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I would understand if Canonical want a new cow to milk, but why are developers even agreeing to this? Are they out of their minds?? Do they actually want companies to steal their code? Or is this some reverse-uno move I don't see yet? I cannot fathom any FOSS project not using the AGPL anymore. It's like they're painting their faces with "here, take my stuff and don't contribute anything back, that's totally fine"

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 46 minutes ago) (1 children)

For me, my personal projects are generally MIT licensed. I generally don't like "restrictions" on licenses, even if those "restrictions" are requiring others to provide their source and I want as many people to use my projects as possible, I don't like to restrict who uses it, even if it's just small/home businesses who don't want to publish the updated source code. Although, I admit, I'm not a huge fan of large corporations potentially using my code to generate a profit and do evil things with it, but I also think that's not going to be very common versus the amount of use others could get from it by having it using MIT who might not be able to use it otherwise with AGPL.

With that said, though, I have been starting to come around more to AGPL these days.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I wohld agree, because you really downplay the scenario.

As soon as you accidentallt create something, which everyone starts to use or has an use case, then some Cooperation will copy that thing, make it better and make your community dissappear because there is the newer tool which you cant change the code of anymore and need to use a monthly subscription or something to even use.

So, it somehow seems like you're gaslighting yourself by downplaying the use case.

Mostly it will be small buisnesses and hobbyists, which I would like to code for them too. Especially when they are nice and friendly. But as soon as Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon gets hands on it and sees a potential to squeeze money through it by destroying it, then they will surely do it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 44 minutes ago

I edited my comment to better and more fully reflect my thoughts. It's hard to properly express myself when I've been as sick as I have been with bronchitis and possible pneumonia for the past 4 weeks.

Hopefully my comment now better reflects my thoughts.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 hours ago

Bruh instead of all this speculation, you guys could have just looked it up.

https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/discussions/4358#discussioncomment-8027681

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

Its simple: its to exploit it in a corporate setting. I license under MIT because a lot of my things are of small convenience, but never without debating the ethics of why I am licensing it.

GNU is the enemy to capitalism and if you need more proof, look at what Apple has done with LLVM/Clang and CUPS. We need GNU more than ever.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago

I understand that if your boss tells you to write MIT/Proprietary code, you do so. I just wish that the ones who had a choice would use GPL

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

Does anyone use MPL anymore? Is it a decent middle ground or the worst of both worlds?

[–] phlegmy 2 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

If you're developing software for a platform that doesn't allow users to replace dynamic libraries (game consoles, iOS, many embedded/commercial systems), you won't be able to legally use any GPL or AGPL libraries.

While I strongly agree with the motives behind copyleft licenses, I personally never use them because I've had many occasions where I was unable to use any available library for a specific task because they all had incompatible licenses.

I release code for the sole purpose of allowing others to use it. I don't want to impose any restrictions on my fellow developers, because I understand the struggle it can bring.

Even for desktop programs, I prefer MIT or BSD because it allows others to take snippets of code without needing to re-license anything.

Yes I understand that means anyone can make a closed-source fork, but that doesn't bother me.
If I wanted to sell it I might care, but I would have used a different license for a commercial project anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

If the only problem is that you can't use dynamic linking (or otherwise make relinking possible), you still can legally use LGPL libraries. As long as you license the project using that library as GPL or LGPL as well.

However, those platforms tend to be a problem for GPL in other ways. GPL has long been known to conflict with Apple's App Store and similar services, for example, because the GPL forbids imposing extra limits that restrict user freedom and those stores have a terms of service that does exactly that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Sorry, I'm not much of a software dev so bear with me:

If the libraries are GPL licensed, is there a problem? Unless you're editing the libraries themselves.

Now if the application is GPL licensed and you're adding functionality to use other libraries, please push upstream. It helps the community and the author will more likely than not be happy to receive it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Any linking against GPL software requires you to also release your source code under GPL. ~~A~~LGPL allows you to link to it dynamically without relicensing, but as explained, there are platforms where dynamic linking isn't an option, which means these libraries can't be used if one doesn't want to provide ~~A~~LGPL licensed source code of their own product.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You mean LGPL when you say AGPL, right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago
[–] phlegmy 1 points 8 hours ago

Using a GPL library will require you to re-license your entire project as GPL, regardless of whether you made a change or not.

LGPL is a bit better, because it allows you to dynamically link the library. But you're required to provide a copy of source for the library, and any users must be able to swap the built library with their own copy.

Eg; you can use an AGPL-licensed .dll in your closed-source windows program, because users can swap that .dll easily.

You can't do the same for a ps5 game because users aren't able to replace any files that the game uses.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I like BSDs more than GPL just personal choice

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Squeek, squack. Your opinion is whack

[–] [email protected] 8 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (2 children)

Apple makes the source code to all their core utilities available? Nobody cares but they do.

Why do they?

They are BSD licensed (very similar to MIT). According to the crowd here, Apple would never Open Source their changes. Yet, in the real world, they do.

Every Linux distro uses CUPS for printing. Apple wrote that and gave it away as free software.

How do we explain that?

There are many companies that use BSD as a base. None of them have take the BSD utils “commercial”.

Why not?

Most of the forks have been other BSD distros. Or Chimera Linux.

How about OpenSSH?

It is MiT licensed. Shouldn’t somebody have embraced, extended, and extinguished it by now?

Why haven’t they?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Apple makes the source code to all their core utilities available

Apple makes the source code for many open source things they distribute available, but often only long after they have shipped binaries. And many parts of their OS which they developed in-house which could also be called "core utilities" are not open source at all.

Every Linux distro uses CUPS for printing. Apple wrote that and gave it away as free software.

Apple did not write cups.It was was created by Michael R. Sweet in 1997, and was GPL-licensed and used on Linux distros before Mac OS X existed. Apple didn't want to be bound by the GPL so they purchased a different license for it in 2002.

Later, in 2007 they bought the source code and hired msweet to continue its development, and at some point the license of the FOSS version was changed to "GNU General Public License ("GPL") and GNU Library General Public License ("LGPL"), Version 2, with an exception for Apple operating systems."

In 2017 it was relicensed Apache 2.0.

Finally, "In December 2019, Michael left Apple to start Lakeside Robotics. In September 2020 he teamed up with the OpenPrinting developers to fork Apple CUPS to continue its development. Today Apple CUPS is the version of CUPS that is provided with macOS® and iOS® while OpenPrinting CUPS is the version of CUPS being further developed by OpenPrinting for all operating systems."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago

I loved this comment as much as a person is allowed to love it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago

"Commercial" is not the opposite of free/libre. In fact, GPL licensed software can be "taken commercial" with a guarantee that it will remain libre, whereas BSD-licensed software doesn't have those guarantees.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Honestly it's probably just because so many devs are involved more in their code and don't want to worry about the nuances and headaches involved in licensing. MIT is still open source.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

I guess I can't really fault that. Developers not interested in the license they use to publish code baffles me

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