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.

  • rglullis@communick.news
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    6 months ago

    Fun fact: argument and discussion can be synonyms, but they can also have distinct meanings.

    It’s amusing to see this much projection. You say that I can’t read, then proceed to misunderstand a basic sentence. You say that you don’t respond because you think I will insult you, then resort to name calling.

    Let us find something better to do with our lives, ok? Have a good one.

    • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Your desperate reply is so predictable I added the quote where you use the specific word “argument” to my comment before you even posted your reply 🤣