TinyX: Small Featured X Server
9 comments
·February 10, 2025observationist
motorest
> Copyleft isn't how the world works.
How do you explain the success of software projects such as the Linux kernel?
> MIT and Apache and liberal licenses liberate ideas for reuse and practical application in the real world.
No. The likes of MIT and Apache allow for royalty-free commercial use of third party software. Aka free labour.
The likes of GPL arguably have a greater impact on the whole concept of reuse because they require consumers to also be reusable by third parties.
It's ok if your goal is to just use someone else's projects for your own commercial benefit. I do that all the time. However, it's not right to try to frame it as something else.
kazinator
While I favor BSD and MIT licenses myself that's all I will use, obviously we've had very successful software that is copylefted.
There are people who won't contribute to your program if it's BSD or MIT. There are those who won't contribute to your program if it's GPL.
A program with any license is at risk of being abandoned as a quirky curiosity, if it, doh, is a quirky curiosity.
pvg
Thread at the time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36498484
tiffanyh
> While the original codebase is MIT, any changes here are GPLv3.
What’s the argument on why to change to a less permissive license?
IncRnd
The answer to your question is in the next sentence, "While the original codebase is MIT, any changes here are GPLv3. Supporting closed devices with this code is not a goal."
glitchc
Protection against corporate interests taking over the project in the future.
wmf
Usually ideology. GNU/FSF people love switching software from permissive to copyleft.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
All things strive
Stallman's principles should be directional - an orientation, aspirational, not something to cling to with bitter insistence. It's the equivalent of screaming "why can't we all just get along" into the Matrix.
Copyleft isn't how the world works. MIT and Apache and liberal licenses liberate ideas for reuse and practical application in the real world. If you want your project to be a quirky curiosity visited and abandoned by people searching for some better solution for their problem, use copyleft.
If you want your idea to make the world a better place, use permissive, liberal licensing and move on.
Forking something from MIT to GPLv3 is disappointing, from this standpoint.