• charje@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    98
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Copyleft licences are the only true free software licences. All other open source licenses are just proprietariable.

      • GregoryTheGreat@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        81
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Not a joke.

        Copy left is like the Robin Hood of the copyright world. Basically, it’s a type of licensing where, sure, you can use, modify, and distribute the copyrighted work, but there’s a catch. You have to give the same rights to anyone else for any derivative works. So, if you modify the work, you can’t just slap a new copyright on it and restrict its use. It’s a way to ensure that the work stays free for everyone to use. It’s pretty popular in the open source community. It’s like copyright turned on its head, hence the name “copyleft”.

          • SlikPikker@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            19
            ·
            1 year ago

            Copyleft tooling built all the most common and widespread tools today, and the foundations of the open web.

        • glassware@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          It’s a shame the strategy is now failing because software as a service is so popular. Nothing in the GPL forces you to distribute your changes if you don’t distribute the program. So just put the program on a webserver and let users interact through an API and hey presto, steal as much GPL code as you like.

          Everyone crucified MongoDB when they tried to create a licence that prevents this, and FSF have declared that the problem can’t be solved with licences and everyone just has to boycott non-free software (good luck!).

          End of free software as we know it, IMHO.

          • Occhioverde@feddit.it
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            13
            ·
            1 year ago

            Wasn’t the Affero GPL (AGPL) created exactely to enforce copyleft in a SaaS environment?

            Quoting from the GNU website:

            [The AGPL] has one added requirement: if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the modified version running there.

      • charje@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        proprietariable just means the code can be taken and rerelased as proprietary (no freedoms all rights reserved).

    • MooseBoys@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      You think that a license that imposes more restrictions on its use is more free than one that imposes fewer???

      Where my Apache-2.0 gang at?

      • Occhioverde@feddit.it
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        This argument reminds me of the Tolerance Paradox described by Karl Popper, who stated that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

        In the licensing context, yes, the Apache and Expat licenses may grant your users the freedom to create proprietary software out of your works, but at the cost of sacrificing all the basic freedoms of all the users that will use the derived non-free product.

        So, like Popper said that you should prefer removing the “smaller” freedom for a society of being intolerant in order to guarantee the “greater” one of remaining tolerant in the future, since you still have to choose which freedoms you are going to negate, it’s preferable to use copyleft and impede the “smaller” freedom of creating proprietary software than not using it and allowing the crushing of future users’ fundamental rights.

      • ourob@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        Well, it depends on your perspective. Copyleft licenses restrict downstream developers in order to protect the rights of downstream users.