Maybe I’m not smart enough to grasp all these flowery words, but is this suggesting if I spend a few years writing some code, you should get to copy it for your own interests and without compensating me as long as your sales and marketing is better than mine?

I don’t think Rockchip learned from the ffmoeg code. They simply copied it outright without attribution.

> The LGPL is a product of a very specific moment: European legalism meeting American corporate compromise

If I tend to agree with the general message of the post, this specific point does not make any sense.

The LGPL and the GPL are 100% American products. They are originally issued from the the American Academic world with the explicit goal of twisting the arm of the (American) copyright system for ideological reasons.

That has zero relation to any European legalism.

re-framing this as a PRC vs West thing seems forced and weird

Why does China vigorously prosecute Chinese nationals when they pirate Chinese software?

So progress is always good, no matter how many people's work you exploit without their consent? You have a nice car, can I just take it and use it myself? Why is code any different? Is slavery OK too?

A much more interesting problem is how to create prosperity without throwing people under the bus - with everybody who contributed profiting proportionally to their contribution.

Capitalism has its downsides but one thing that it does better than all previous known systems is efficiently allocate resources that result in productivity. That is, it is the most efficient system we know.

Investment that does not result in utility for the investor leads to reduced investment. This is true regardless of if the “investment” is money or talent”.

Your suggestion that a system that allows people to ignore the price creators demand for their creations will be more efficient has been refuted over and over again throughout history.

Except of course for that one little detail where Chinese companies take out minor improvement patents to kick the door shut on open source projects that they build on top of.

Software licensing is just another form of property rights, and property rights is what society uses to incentivise civility.

> There's a pattern here that's bigger than FFmpeg

Why are you turning this into a discussion about China?

Its not about china.

Its about stealing.

Its not a complex, or western concept.

ChatGPT write this bro?

This perfectly summarizes my feeling about software licenses.

I've always found it beyond ridiculous. Either you post your code in public and you accept it'll be used by others, without any enforceable restriction, or you don't. It's as simple as that.

The rest is self-importance from bitter old men.

Awesome comment. Thank you.

> Declining civilizations obsess over rules. Rising ones obsess over outcomes.

Heard that in a very different context. Care to mention what you are referring to? How do you know?