I'm curious as to why. The GPL has manifestly built the modern internet (cloud servers are mostly Linux, most IT startups use Linux, etc.)
There are other open source licences which are also widely used (Apache, BSD, MIT). So I think the key thing to this wide-spread success is open source in general, and not the license in particular.
Would you say that the GPL is negative? I.e. would we have been better off of Linux was BSD licenses? If so, why? If not, why be against the GPL?
Even though I personally believe in open sourcing everything possible, when all else is equal, I would always choose something that isn't copyleft over something that is. Because I shouldn't really have to be bothered by copyright infringement concerns when using open source software.
It's most free for end users.
But if we're talking about tools for a developer audience--like RethinkDB, and frankly a whole lot of other open source software--then developers are the end users, and so the license really does matter. I've long thought that one of the strengths of the GPL is that it's more restrictive from a developer standpoint, rather than less. If I was trying to build a company around open source software, the (A)GPL would be attractive expressly because it makes it more difficult for competitors to build on. If the company goes away and there's no way for someone to buy a commercial license with a different set of restrictions, that can become an issue, as we've seen with RethinkDB -- but the (A)GPL isn't necessarily an impediment to strong community development, as we've seen with, well, a lot of other software over the last two decades.
While I accept that the OSI definition of "open source" is pretty much universally accepted and probably isn't going to change, I personally don't really feel like copyleft should qualify because of that level of control it exerts.
For the most part it does not matter if Linux is GPL or not because GPL functions very differently for operating systems than for libraries and applications. However the GPL is causing issues for Linux as well and there are some ongoing lawsuits involving the GPL in the context of the Linux Kernel which will be interesting to see.
I do not know what a world looks like where the GPL does not exist so I won't judge that. The GPL was and is amazing to help the Open Source movement however it's becoming less and less relevant for new projects.
> why be against the GPL?
It's a very complicated license, impossible to evolve and means that you can build something that you cannot ship on another platform because that platform is GPL incompatible. For instance you will never see GPLv3 code running on iOS because you just can't have it there. The mechanics of the license are very complex and I do not agree with the "force people to contribute" approach. Good contributions come anyways, the bad ones I do not care. If someone wants to fuck over a license holder over they can do it regardless (for instance by providing close to unreadable GPL code :)
That would be a case against iOS, take it up with the masters of your walled garden.
That is hard to say. Some contributors only contribute to GPL projects, since they want that derivative works of their work to stay open-sourced. I think they should have a right to require that.
