alt Hacker NewsAs someone who has spent a fair amount of time developing open source software, I will say I genuinely dislike copyleft and GPL.
For those who are into freedom, I don't see how dictating how you use what you build in such a manner is in the spirit of free and open.
Just my opinion on it, to each their own on the matter.
Replies
Copyleft isn't about the software authors freedom, it's about the end-users freedom. Copyleft grants the end-user the freedom to study and modify the code, i.e. the right to repair. Contrast this with closed-source software which may incorporate permissively licensed code: the end-user has no right to study, no right to modify, and no right to repair. Ergo less freedom.
It's not dictating how you use what you build? It's dictating how you redistribute what you build on top of other people's work.
I disagree as someone who has also spent a huge amount of time on open source software. It’s all GPL or AGPL :)
As somebody who thinks that people currently own the code that they write, I wonder why you're in people's business who want to write GPL'd software.
Are you complaining about proprietary software? I hear the restrictions are a lot tighter for Photoshop's source code, or iOS's, but for some reason you are one of the people who hate GPL as a hobby. Please don't show up whining about "spirits" when Amazon puts you out of business.
I had a very similar view once, and have since understood that this is mainly a difference in perspective:
It's easy as a developer to slip into a role where you want to build/package (maybe sell) some software product with minimal obligations. BSD-likes are obviously great there.
But the GPL follows a different perspective: It tries to make sure that every user of any software product is always capable of tinkering and changing it himself, and the more permissive licenses do not help there because they don't prevent (or even discourage!) companies from just selling you stripped and obfuscated binary blobs that put you fully at the vendors mercy.