alt Hacker News> There was always tension between the folks that shipped GPL software and folks that shipped BSD/MIT software, but the dividing line was not whether or not we were “commercial programmers and startup bros”.
> It has always come down to questions of what we believe freedom to mean, how we wanted to contribute utility to the world, and whether we saw the use of our software in commercial projects as a loss to ourselves in a zero sum game.
I remember the shitstorm Zed Shaw caused when he built something on top of MIT/BSD-licensed libraries and released it under GPL. "B-but that's against the spirit of the license!" people said.
This is a very old argument, rooted in differences in how one believes OSS cooperation is best fostered; through social norms and practices, and/or through legal fiat.
BSD/MIT authors see most proprietary use as a feature — it can drive adoption and contributions that wouldn’t exist otherwise, while generally not directly competing with the original project in the open source commons.
It is considered an opportunity to leverage social mechanisms to garner support and contribution that would otherwise not be available.
GPL relicensing is different, in that it creates a direct rival open source commons with inescapable one-way asymmetry.
The license permits it, but since BSD/MIT authors tend to prefer social norms over legal fiat to sustain cooperation, they don’t see hypocrisy in objecting (even if GPL advocates do).
(I’ve tried to be as measured as possible, but obviously, I fall on one side of the debate, and I’m sure that my point of view leaks through.)