alt Hacker NewsIt's a choice for the authors to make based on what type of free they believe in. I think free under MIT and GPL are two different philosophies on how you see "free".
MIT: free for anyone, do whatever you want
GPL: free if you also make your software free
AGPL: GPL but SaaS can't circumvent the requirement to make your software free
I see why principled open source proponents would select GPL or AGPL. They don't just want their code to be used freely by others, they also believe more software should be free and using GPL helps with that.
GPL restrictions don't make software under the GPL not "free" as in freedom. Just a different philosophy.
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I like the GPL and think its "virality" is both clever and a worthwhile social goal, but I think it's misleading to call it "free". It directly restricts possible usage of the software in question -- yes, in a way that's designed to increase another kind of freedom, but it restricts nonetheless.
FWIW I have the same quarrel with people who talk about a country being "free". To my mind, a truly free country would have no laws. It would be a horrible place, because the restrictions that laws place on us tend to make things better for everyone (we may disagree on this law or that law, but some laws, like "Don't kill someone without a very good reason", would have >99% popular support anywhere in the world).
"More free" does not necessarily imply "better"; it could be better or worse. I'd like to shift usage of the words "free" and "freedom" in this direction, but think it's probably a lost cause as the words are too emotionally charged with connotations of "good".
I'd choose a different framing to that:
MIT: freedom for devs
GPL: freedom for users
AGPL: freedom for SaaS users