CY-X FORUM

Libre software forms the basis for commercial non-free software. The norm is to shit on permissive licenses because the MIT license allowed Intel to hijack MINIX and use it as the OS that powers Management Engine, and Andrew Tanenbaum couldn't do jack fucking shit about it. That norm exists for good reason, but we should also consider how not every permissively licensed project would end up like MINIX.

FreeBSD is used by Sony to power the PS4 and PS5's operating systems, WhatsApp uses it on their servers, as does Netflix and many others. These companies not only use FreeBSD, but they also submit their own patches and modifications back upstream that later get integrated. FreeBSD is not "base system + X11/Wayland + KDE/XFCE/whatever + all the shit I use like a normal human being;" it's literally the base system alone. Y'know, that text console you boot into after installing it? Sending bug fixes, patches, modifications, and so on back to FreeBSD doesn't hurt those companies because all the secret sauce is in the upper layers, where the UX lies. The opposite is true; it behooves them to cooperate with upstream.

Also, lest we forget, Wine is free software that's not permissively licensed, but its copyleft is weak enough to allow for integration into proprietary programs. Codeweavers literally has most of the development team on Wine under their payroll, they take the Wine source code, and add some UX tooling and commercial support that they keep behind a proprietary wall. The guys who run pfSense and OPNSense have their own private companies, where they take pfSense/OPNSense, put it onto some network box that they sell on their website, and that network box has proprietary tooling and UX shit that ain't free to the world.

Copyleft is ideal, but we shouldn't let Tanenbaum's misfortunes override pragmatic reality on the ground. Sometimes, a weak copyleft or permissive licensing is a good thing.

Also, given how the Linux community deeply despises corporations but it's thanks to corporations Linux is a serious kernel and not some GNU Hurd tier tinker toy, it's not too surprising. The biggest cancer on proliferation of Linux due to how disassociated with reality and constantly confused the average Linux community member is. Of course, the Linux community will be at a denial to this fact forever, even if all the facts in front of them make this truth abundantly clear: without corporate interest Linux would die.

Every advancement in the code that pushed Linux further to widespread viability was a result of corporate backed interest. Anything that wasn't remained dead in the water. It took a corporation like Valve to take Wine and work on it themselves to create Proton to make Linux gaming viable. The Linux community would never accomplish this in a hundred years and would instead forever bicker about how you can't play games on Linux. The day the Linux community collectively accepts that fact is the day Linux can finally succeed as a desktop OS.

>>2425
If you aren't coding anything, the license of something should not influence whether or not you use it

Permissive licenses are good, because they are closer to the public domain, which is the ideal state of software. I don't care whether your copyright restrictions are used for something honorable, in principle at least, I don't want any stupid restrictions. If you want to be "anti-copyright", and say that ideas shouldn't be owned by somebody, yada yada yada, then you should also accept somebody taking your code, because anything else would mean you own the code. GNUfags always say that actually the GPL is actually "against copyright" in how it works, but you can see that this isn't true in how much they obsess over attribution, and the million other little rules their license imposes.

Arguing with gnutards is pointless because the gpl is a political statement and gnutards are political activists. That's why they're so fucking retarded and annoying. The best course of action when you ever spot one in the wild is to tell them to end their life and block them.

>>2425
>FreeBSD is used by Sony to power the PS4 and PS5's operating systems, WhatsApp uses it on their servers, as does Netflix and many others. These companies not only use FreeBSD, but they also submit their own patches and modifications back upstream that later get integrated. FreeBSD is not "base system + X11/Wayland + KDE/XFCE/whatever + all the shit I use like a normal human being;" it's literally the base system alone. Y'know, that text console you boot into after installing it? Sending bug fixes, patches, modifications, and so on back to FreeBSD doesn't hurt those companies because all the secret sauce is in the upper layers, where the UX lies. The opposite is true; it behooves them to cooperate with upstream.

Just because they can contribute back doesn't mean they will. GPL forces them to contribute back and is designed for consumer protection.

>These companies not only use FreeBSD, but they also submit their own patches and modifications back upstream that later get integrated.
As if GPL wouldn't force them to.

>but we shouldn't let Tanenbaum's misfortunes override pragmatic reality on the ground.
Permissive Licensce Pragmatic reality is allowing them to do this, GPL wouldn't allow this. Why even give them this possbility?

>>2426
that is whyy gpl won

>>23592
>As if GPL wouldn't force them to.
It doesn't. Sony steals GPL code all the time. Microsoft too.

>>23594
https://softwarefreedom.org/news/2007/sep/20/busybox/
if you know any infractions go ahead and tell frdm about it

>>23594

GPL zealots hate anyone that doesn't use their license. They also "steal" code from BSD projects since if you re-license to GPL to appease them typically they refuse to re-license in return if they make changes to their fork.

It's a big stupid gay divide and conquer tactic from both sides to ensure people that develop software for free are constantly in-fighting because they're split into two different camps. Trillions of hours of time have been wasted over the years simply because a sperg insists that you use his sperg license so you have to re-implement something by coding it from scratch instead of using an existing piece of code. Both sides have their idols promoting their preferred license and everything.

You can dual-license which means licensing under both at the same time to avoid the issue. But GPL zealots claim this isn't good for <reasons>. Their whole argument is some large company will take the code and not give back any changes they might have made. In reality, large companies steal GPL'd code all of the time without crediting them (closed source software) or they take over GPL licensed projects by paying people to work on any code they want to use. Thus ensuring the entire project goes to shit because most FOSS developers don't really care about ethics and only want more of the almighty dollar.

You shouldn't concern yourself with it. Ignore licenses and pirate everything. Treat data like speech.

One problem people forget is being pragmatic.
I've seen startup companies with good ideas get fucked for open sourcing their software from the start, which GPL forces. Ans if you don't you risk a lawsuit. Ironically GNU doesn't seem to start lawsuits with big tech. Small startups can't compete with google and others when it comes to marketing, so they need to make stuff proprietary at least in the start, and then when they get established they can open source it all. A few do this and it works out better for them.

You want to increase competition, that's the point of Open Source, but if your Open Source license instead hinders it then it shouldn't be used. I do agree that there is software that do benefits from GPL. It's a case by case basis.
For example a PoS register system would benefit from being permissively licensed, since that would help smaller actors make their own proprietary stuff and compete more. PoS systems are expensive mainly due to being a very uncompetitive market.
But software for let's say hospitals and such? Probably GPL is better since they pay insane amounts just to update a database to add one single fucking column because the software is proprietary and the alternative to paying those insane amounts for a small update is to pay someone to build it from scratch. See how permissive license can turn exploitative but also enhance competition? The same applies to GPL. And this is something GNUtards refuse to accept.

Linux is ran by big tech. Look at The Linux Foundation's board of directors or whatever it's called.