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NoahZunigayesterday at 4:39 PM3 repliesview on HN

Well, many developers publish their code not because they want to specifically make a successful open source project, but because they made something that was useful to themselves, and like the idea behind open source. In that case it makes more sense to do a copyleft license because it will legally require all derivatives to also follow that open source idea.


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jaredklewisyesterday at 5:05 PM

Yea I think stuff like this is great and will have some impact around the edges. Perhaps particularly in the realm of end-user software, like a window tiling manager.

But once we start talking about the kind of software large corporations (like AWS) will have an interest in, projects have to be successful to be useful. Software requires maintenance so the maintainers need to be able to devote their time to maintaining and improving the project. So this will select for projects that are successful enough that the maintainers can focus on it fully (either because some company hires them to work on their own project, they can charge high consulting fees because of their association with the project, or whatever).

I think "the code" (the thing covered by copyright) in most cases is not as valuable as "the project:" the leadership, the contributors, the users, the norms and practices, the commitment to ongoing maintenance, and so on. So just lots of individuals all putting pieces of their code out there with GPL probably doesn't make a lot of impact (though there is nothing wrong with it), because most users don't want "code" they want a "project" they can rely on.

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bigstrat2003today at 3:27 AM

> In that case it makes more sense to do a copyleft license because it will legally require all derivatives to also follow that open source idea.

That is a matter of opinion. I have put out some open source stuff under the form you mentioned, and it's always BSD or another permissive license. I view it as quite wrong to force my moral choices upon others, so I give others the freedom to use whatever license they like. In my case, that is what makes sense because of my own moral convictions.