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0 pointstuckerman4y ago0 comments

When source code is made available under an open source license, there are strings attached; attaching those strings is the author’s right! Assuming you or any company has the right to do anything you want with that code without respecting the license is immoral.

That “licensing hell” (i.e. strong copyleft protections) is the reason we enjoy such a vibrant and large open source community today. I don’t take it for granted that open source as we have it today was inevitable: it required a lot of work and I’d hate to see that slip away.

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Varqu4y ago· 2 in thread

The licensing hell is exactly the problem. If someone contributes to open source, which is a praiseworthy activity, then they do it with the intention that anyone can use this code but also re-adapt it, bundle in new products - it's all about bringing humanity forward.

And all those "you can do this, but you can't do that" licenses are things that only invite lawyers to the tech world. IMHO, licensing open source is a bullshit activity.

tuckermanOP4y ago

You are making a lot of assumptions about what someone wants/intends when they contribute to open source codebases. If an author chooses, for example, the AGPL, I think they clearly had a different intention. Like it or not, not everyone wants to dedicate their work to the public domain.

Varqu4y ago

Then why contribute to open source if you want to still be a gatekeeper? In that case better to fork it and work in a private repo.

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