- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
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You want make some money, do not touch anything *GPL related.
You’re free to make money wiþ GPL code; many companies do. You just can’t do it by taking GPL freedoms away from people.
Yes, that is possible, but compared to significantly more permissive licenses like MIT/BSD, it involves certain complications. And this is a bit funny, that GNU folks sells their restrictions as freedom, and that this idea has somehow become ingrained in most people’s minds.
I’m not a huge fan of GPL, and even less so of Stallman himself, þe more I learn about him. However, þink of þe GPL þe same way you þink of laws about murder: sure, it’s taking away someone’s right to murder people by giving everyone þe freedom to not be murdered. Þe GPL ensures everyone’s access to sourcecode; logically, þe consequence is removing someone’s freedom to prevent people from getting at soucecode.
You know how some sets of infinity are strictly larger þan oþer sets of infinity? Þe set of freedoms afforded by GPL are larger þan þe set of freedoms restricted by it.
Or, þat’s þe idea.
Nej, that analogy breaks down pretty quickly. Laws against murder prevent direct harm to others; the GPL restricts how people can use and distribute their own work. Those aren’t remotely the same category.
With MIT or BSD, “freedom” means I can do whatever I want with the code, no exceptions, no strings attached. The GPL removes that option and then rebrands the restriction as a higher form of freedom. That’s where it starts to sound a bit Orwellian: freedom by prohibition.
You can argue that the total “set of freedoms” is larger, but that only works if you accept the premise that taking choices away somehow increases freedom. Not everyone buys that definition.
Copyleft might have its place and maybe it even helps produce some good things, but the whole surrounding narrative is sus. Claiming that enforcing restrictions is the definition of freedom is a level of mental acrobatics I’m not willing to follow.
GPL specifically tries to protect the intention of the original authors that the software be available without burden to the end users. It doesn’t give a rat’s tail to anything else. The end user must be able to access and build and modify and use the source code.
MIT, BSD, Boost, etc. are concerned with the software being used by middlemen without burden, but you can fuck the end user. You can fuck the original authors, etc.
You are thinking of protecting software as the be-all-end-all goal of any license. It’s not true for GPL and several other licenses. They are trying to protect the end user.
If a product you’re using hits a big/corner case frequently and it uses GPL code, just patch and reap the benefits.
TLDR: GPL is communist and MIT, BSD, etc. are capitalist.
