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.

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    People seem to think that those who choose permissive licences don’t know what they’re doing. Software can be a gift to the world with no strings attached. A company “taking” your code is never taking it away from you, you still have all the code you wrote. Some people want this. MIT is not an incomplete GPL, it has its own reasons.

    As mentioned in another post, I had another motivation for preferring the BSD license over the GPL .

    I maintained a security product for years after the original author left this mature project and focus on life things. In South Korea, 4 engineers used this GPL project internally, but when they went to submit changes back to the project, they were accused and tried for industrial espionage, as the laws in South Korea could be construed to have bearing.

    They lost. They’re in jail. The FSF took on their case, but was unable to change that. And, in reality, they were jailed for fulfilling the license requirements.

    Since then, I simply cannot guarantee that people will be free from penalty when following the license terms, and I carry a lot of guilt over it – it ultimately led to my scaling-back on work and then moving off the project completely. But the code I do write, I prefer the BSD license. I cannot control or predict what people will do, and I certainly cannot control the action of companies when even the FSF can’t steer them properly.

    I have no issue with people choosing the GPL; consider it, choose it, support it, that’s all good and well and proper. Keep doing that, and were my support ever needed, you’d have it. But my choice is different.

    I got a LOT of flack when I mentioned this before; like I’m some turncoat or cuck and not allowed in the techbro club. And while their opinion is unassailable, its value scales accordingly. Bless their heart.