Software licensing and my opposition to copyleft

https://github.com/BurntSushi/notes/blob/master/2020-10-29_licensing-and-copyleft.md

by todsacerdoti • 6 years ago

65 120 6 years ago

tehjoker2• 6 years ago

"Thirdly, there are practical reasons to oppose copyleft. Namely, when I publish source code, one of my main goals is for as many people as possible to use it, regardless of whether it's other individuals or giant corporations."

This seems to be possibly the most salient reason people who otherwise oppose copyright oppose copyleft. This is a conflict between people who are ideologically liberal who are attempting to engage in a kind of left politics. They display willingness to allow corporations and capitalism generally to exploit their work on their own terms without giving back. They generally accept the economic order.

On the other hand, if you are a committed anti-capitalist: who care? The corporations, the bosses, the exploiters. They should all perish from the earth anyway and we should feel absolutely free to use the system they constructed against them and for each other.

Our own individualistic tactics of not partaking in distasteful systems is idealistic and due to the power imbalance will not amount to much. Only tactics that force decisions and build dual-power communities can correct such a situation.

Bear in mind that if we decide to use copyleft as a tactic against corporate rule en mass, it is flawed as it is to use the power of the state against corporate interests which own the state. This is a severe limitation because if it becomes enough of a hindrance, the state will just pass something like a "national security" exception to copyleft and every defense contractor and company over a certain net worth will qualify.

Ar-Curunir2• 6 years ago

Anti capitalism doesn’t mean abandonment of principles, and in particular leveraging the enemy’s tools (ie the state) only leads to failure for leftist projects. See: USSR, China, every social-democratic party everywhere

tehjoker2• 6 years ago

I think we are in agreement? I would note that the latter part is fairly contentious depending on which leftist you talk to.

robertlagrant3• 6 years ago

This commonly comes up in discussions where folks release software under a license that allows some bad behavior (like plagiarism) and then complain when that plagiarism happens. People inevitably respond with some low brow blame-the-victim nonsense, "well, that's what you get for using a license that allows it."

This feels wrong. How can someone be a victim of an act they voluntarily declared was okay?

chordalkeyboard18• 6 years ago

Written agreements like contracts and licenses can never exhaust the possibility space and so its not possible to list every type of bad behavior. It may not be practical for some users to give credit to the original writer so the originator doesn't require it in the license, this doesn't mean its ok for someone to pass off someone else's work as their own.

from tfa:

This leads to an important distinction that I draw but that seems routinely ignored among denizens of the web. Namely, that laws and ethics are not one in the same. One can be opposed to using a law to inhibit some undesirable behavior while simultaneously finding that behavior unethical.

rhn_mk15• 6 years ago

Laws applying generally differ from your licensing choices in that laws affect everyone, and your license only apply to those who explicitly want to obey them.

Therefore, laws will inevitably end up not matching somoene's ethics, while it's entirely up to you whether you allow others to do things you consider unethical with your software.

So if you do indeed not forbid others from using your software in a way you don't like, you don't have anything to complain about: it was your choice.

* * *

Separately, I'm not certain about the distinction between law and morality. Law is a set of rules of what things shall and shall not be done, being a code of moral rules in this sense. This is also what we use it for: we as societies generally use law to express our ethical stance on murder and violence, for example, but also theft, the permission to take drugs and drink alcohol, to go out at night.

In this case, it's beneficial to my conscience if the law is a codification of my own morality. But the author claims that they make a distinction: there are ethical rules that should not be codified.

Wwere does the line go? I can understand justifying that position by saying that people with different moral codes would riot, making it impractical to forbid what I see as immoral.

I ask this question because that was not explained, and is the justification for preferring to abolish copyright rather than instill the 4 rules, even though the author seems to agree with both, and both are just as impractical to implement at this time (would make people riot).

segfaultbuserr2• 6 years ago

+1. It's important to realize that copyright violation and plagiarism are two completely different concepts. A copyright violation is the non-fair, unauthorized use or distribution of copyright works, which is strictly, formally defined in terms of laws and licenses. On the other hand, plagiarism is a concept from academic ethics, namely, failing to give credit where credit is due. Often, one doesn't have any legal requirement to give acknowledgement in many circumstances, and to what extent an acknowledgement should be given is not always formally defined, it can be personal and subjective. However, overall, it's considered as an act of honesty and politeness. For example, using a result without credit can sometimes be considered acceptable if it's well-known and has a low contextual importance. On the other hand, creating a derivative work based on previous experimental data or literary works without acknowledging its source is considered dishonest, even if it's totally legal to do so when the work itself is published under CC-0.

This commonly comes up in discussions where folks release software under a license that allows some bad behavior (like plagiarism) and then complain when that plagiarism happens. People inevitably respond with some low brow blame-the-victim nonsense, "well, that's what you get for using a license that allows it."

Statements like these reflect the confusion between license requirements and ethics. Yes, it's completely legal to use an existing FOSS work without explicit acknowledgements. And sometimes, it may even be considered by people/authors as totally reasonable (one certainly doesn't expect every single program in existence to acknowledge GCC or clang, unless you are writing a complier based on the ideas found in them).

However, when a company releases a product that is substantially based on a FOSS project (or its idea) legally without giving explicit credit, it's still all but fair for its authors to express their dissatisfaction on the lack of acknowledgement. Sure, the company has the legal right to do so, and not everyone will find that it's problematic. Regardless, it's also certain that it will be criticized by many members of the public as being unfriendly to developers, and I think the existence of such public criticisms is not less reasonable than the act of using something without acknowledgement (read: use without acknowledgement in the way you want, and get criticized in the way we expect).

Giving credit is not fully a legal matter, and I don't think attempting to codify all the requirements of acknowledgement in a bunch of software license is the right way to go. What we need is probably an informal code of conduct on attribution in the software industry.

lmm3• 6 years ago

Yeah. The talk of "full coercive power of the state" seems to be nonsense given that copyright infringement is not a criminal matter; if you don't want to use the court system to pursue someone who infringes your copyright, you can just... not.

burntsushi21• 6 years ago

But that's not a guarantee that others have. All they would have is my word. Copyleft works because it is, ultimately, backed by law. If I used copyleft but promised not to pursue violations of copyleft, what exactly would that accomplish?

GoblinSlayer4• 6 years ago

Sometimes copyright infringement is criminal.

andrey_utkin2• 6 years ago

This feels wrong. How can someone be a victim of an act they voluntarily declared was okay?

Mutual vulnerability is one of the keys to healthy relationships (in marriage, teamwork etc). From this perspective, the discussed statement makes perfect sense to me.

People avoid building relationships with invulnerable, and normal people don't optimize for their own invulnerability, to not miss out on relationships.

robertlagrant3• 6 years ago

I'm struggling to connect how healthy relationships, marriage or teamwork have anything to do with software being published under a licence, used accordingly by a third party, and the original licensor becoming upset at it being used according to the licence they published it under.

It seems like a lot of emotional language trying to obscure a pretty straightforward situation.

Vinnl• 6 years ago

I would think the reason is that in those cases, when they "voluntarily declare it was OK" that wasn't actually a conscious decision, i.e. they said yes to one thing without realising that that by definition also implied saying yes to something they'd rather not say yes to. So they are a victim of their own mistakes.

Compare it with me not realising I'm logged in to the production database, and accidentally wiping it. Sure, you could say "that's what you get for logging in to the production database", but you could also say that maybe the organisation setup shouldn't have led me to logging in there.

robertlagrant3• 6 years ago

Yes, sure, but that's not a useful analogy when it comes to what people picked for their licence. There's no equivalent "company you were working for" to blame a process failure on, and picking the wrong licence isn't even a process failure. It's either an individual failure at the time, or it's someone who changed their mind.

I'm not arguing whether or not it's nice to do this, but I think it's important to be clear that what you set out in your licence is important, and your fault if it's wrong.

austincheney• 6 years ago

Licensing is a utility. I have never really understood licensing as a political movement.

In the past I have contributed to open source because I created tools that were useful to me and could be useful to other people. By exposing such a tool other people report defects and the tool gets more sturdy. I would normally just license things with CC0.

In my current project I am using the most restrictive open source license I can find: AGPLv3. The idea is to expose the source code to encourage trust and allow other people to reproduce the work in a practical manner without sacrificing authorship or trust. I considering turning the project into a business in the future would like to retain control of the idea and limit competition without sacrificing trust or integrity.

None of this reasoning is political. It just about writing better software.

burntsushi21• 6 years ago

Well, as I pointed out, my goal is for as many people to use my software as possible. The choice of license impacts this goal.

One could also make hand wavy arguments about more use leading to better software. That's certainly the case for much of my code. If fewer people used it, it might not have improved as much as it has. (Obviously "more use" is not the only path to better software! And it does not guarantee improvements either.)

I can say that without a doubt, if I had released, for example, ripgrep under the AGPLv3, far fewer people would be using it today.

pmcp• 6 years ago

I respect your position, and in general I agree. But your position on what political is, feels a bit unholistic. When more than one person is involved, everything is political, and very much so if you talk about contracts between people, which licenses are. A contract is a construct, it’s something that doesn’t exist, and has a lot of grey area. There is a system in place to debate whether specific actions are respecting the idea of the contract, in the case of licences, this can be a court of law.

Wanting to write better software is a good, and I would think quite common goal. But so is wanting to have a good life. It’s on the road to that goal, with a lot of other people wanting the same goal but having just a slightly different idea of how to get there, that it gets political.

Ultimatt• 6 years ago

I'm not sure why pharma constantly gets a poke whenever anyone discusses copyright and patents. It's just a normal industry, it feels like everything is biased simply out of Heinz dilemma and that there is more often a moral dilemma involved. The reality is pharma are not that bad at all for the most part. Big pharma are increasingly embracing being open too, it's just far more cost effective and if you own the compounds someone else finds a use for then everyone wins money wise. The openness is only founded on the ability to own and control https://www.opentargets.org/

ketzo• 6 years ago

It's not remotely a normal industry. It's one that profiteers on medicine that literally saves lives. That upsets me, even if I understand it's the world we live in.

luckylion5• 6 years ago

Would the same medicine be created (often costing large sums of money) if they didn't have the incentive of profit? What's the alternative that creates the same quality and quantity?

Software is the special case, I think. Plenty of open source software gets created because the developers themselves need a problem solved and then decide to share the result. If you applied that to Pharma, wouldn't that lead to the things being researched that researchers are affected by?

andrey_utkin2• 6 years ago

It's one that profiteers on medicine that literally saves lives.

Imagine that tomorrow some software you have written, or just something you own in your house, "literally saves lives".

Would you be happy to be forced to give it away, if it's not what you intended to do with it?

Would you be happy to be forced to keep producing it at a loss to yourself?

chordalkeyboard18• 6 years ago

one reason is because the ability to profit from patented drugs incentivizes corporations to invest large amounts of money in r&d for novel compounds (sometimes a minor variation of an existing old compound) rather than investigating the efficacy of drugs and compounds that already exist and have therapeutic uses since ancient times. This creates a system where life-saving drugs are so expensive that people need insurance to afford them, which shifts the cost to corporations and other people, makes the patient dependent on their employer, and prevents lots of people from even accessing the drugs. Then people react by pursuing "alternative' remedies that may or may not work, and may or may not also have their own side effects, however there is not a corresponding investment in the efficacy and side effects of these "alternative" approaches, allowing quacks and charlatans to exploit the sick, poor, and ignorant.

BlueTemplar• 6 years ago

Patents only last 14 years, they are much less problematic than copyright.

chordalkeyboard18• 6 years ago

Thats a long time to live with sickness if you can’t afford the drug because the law is written so that there is an exclusive right over who can manufacture it.

Hokusai2• 6 years ago

While I oppose all forms of intellectual property, this opposition is rarely practiced. I regularly publish software that is copyrighted by me.

Trying to read the article in the most positive way, I agree with it. Copyleft would not be needed if copyright laws were reasonable.

But, being a practical person, I understand that we live in a different situation. Copyright exists and is designed to serve a set of interests that usually does not include the general public.

Copyleft is a great way of assuring freedom. MySQL is an excellent example on how non-copyleft open licenses may give you freedom in practice but end meaning the end of a product. QT is going the same road.

Many "open source" products are freemium products were the "open source" part is good enough to make difficult to justify the creation of competitors but bad enough that anyone with a serious use have to pay for the professional version.

Linux is great and free because its copyleft license. It makes it really hard to embrace and extinguish the project.

one of my main goals is for as many people as possible to use it, regardless of whether it's other individuals or giant corporations.

This is a false dichotomy. The bigger corporations use Linux and other copyleft products. They are just forced to give back to the community, and only if they offer that product externally. There is limitation on the abuse not the use.

burntsushi21• 6 years ago

This is a false dichotomy.

There is no false dichotomy because I never set up any kind of dichotomy. I'm just listing examples of folks that I want to use my code. And you left off the rest of my quote that explains in a bit more detail:

Given the current intellectual property regime, corporations are incentivized against the use of copyleft software in a large variety of circumstances. Thus, copyleft software, particularly libraries, is regularly avoided by corporations. Since some of these corporations also play a huge role in the FOSS world itself, this leads to systemic network effects that push folks strongly towards the use of permissive licenses. Thus, putting aside ideology and activism, it is simply a reality that if I publish a library with a copyleft license, it's less likely to be used by folks, which is inhibits my goal.

The fact that corporations do use copyleft in some places doesn't negate this point at all. It's pretty clear that there are a wide variety of circumstances in which copyleft is avoided.

This isn't theoretical or hand wavy. I have direct experience with this. One of the criteria Visual Studio Code used to evaluate ripgrep was its permissive license.[1]

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/19983#issuecommen...

hakre• 6 years ago

The licensing requirements of third parties then was the reason you switched to MIT license? Was there a key-moment and would you be okay to share more about it?

Hokusai2• 6 years ago

This isn't theoretical or hand wavy. I have direct experience with this.

Yes. I never questioned that part.

corporations are incentivized against the use of copyleft software

And what is that incentive? Permissive licenses. Remove all MIT licenses and replace them with copyleft ones and you will see drastic increase on Copyleft usage.

Opposing copyleft because corporations is harmful for everybody. I understand why corporations choose non-copyleft and that exact reasons is why copyleft is so important.

yakubin• 6 years ago

Copyleft is a great way of assuring freedom. MySQL is an excellent example on how non-copyleft open licenses may give you freedom in practice but end meaning the end of a product. QT is going the same road.

Both MySQL and Qt are licensed under GPL/LGPL, unless you pay for a commercial license. So, if anything, they are examples of copyleft licensing.

rhn_mk15• 6 years ago

On the surface of it, yes, but at least in the Qt case, the Qt Company is exempt from obeying the GPL by requiring contributors to assign them copyright, effectively making the codebase permissive for themselves and only themselves.

red_trumpet• 6 years ago

Copyleft is a great way of assuring freedom. MySQL is an excellent example on how non-copyleft open licenses may give you freedom in practice but end meaning the end of a product. QT is going the same road.

Can you elaborate on this? According to Wikipedia[1], MySQL is licensed under GPLv2, and iirc that is a copyleft license?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL

laumars• 6 years ago

People will undoubtably pick this submission apart because opinions on licensing are a deeply personal thing but I’d wager Burntsushi has done more for open source than most of the folk who’ll comment. So pseudo-religious arguments aside, I thank you, burntsushi for all the code you have written.

I know for a fact I use your code on a nearly daily basis and I’m sure there’s others who have equally as benefitted from your work.

luckylion5• 6 years ago

I don't really understand the "thank you, dear author of article that somebody else linked here" comments. Is there any specific reason to believe that the author will read it? If not, who's the intended recipient of that comment?

The first part, I believe, is garbage. They might've done a lot or a little for open source, that shouldn't mean their ideas aren't to be criticized or picked apart.

erk__• 6 years ago

Well it is not unlikely they will read it as they are active on this post.

And the other part is simply just ethos, who the author is does change what kind of credibility you will give an argument.

saagarjha4• 6 years ago

I don't think the parent comment made any prescription on whether 'burntsushi's ideas can be criticized here.

wodenokoto• 6 years ago

I think it is completely understandable and forgiveable that you don't know who Burntsushi is, or that he is quite active on HN [1], and I don't think your post warrents the downvotes it has received. This isn't the kind of thing we should expect HN users to know.

In this case, chances are quite good that the author of the article will read the parent comment (and the author has responded to other comments as well)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=burntsushi

GoblinSlayer4• 6 years ago

Intellectual property doesn't rely solely on law, there are technical means to enforce it like DRM, tivoization, SaaSS and, well, monopolization, you can't defeat them by just walking and talking. He literally complains that copyleft doesn't allow corporations enforce their intellectual property. What he opposes?

burntsushi21• 6 years ago

When I say "intellectual property" in the post, what I mean is the system of laws and court systems built up around it to support it. Because ultimately, that's where my issue lies.

When it comes to DRM and the like, it falls into the category of things I'm personally against but don't think there should be laws prohibiting it. This falls out of my section on "laws codifying the four freedoms" I think.

cmeacham98• 6 years ago

Ideologically, it's pretty simple: I don't believe that ideas can be meaningfully owned as property.

Software isn't an idea. It required real work of a scarce-ish resource (software dev time) to create that software. You could make the argument that software, unlike a physical good, can be copied at almost no cost after creation; however, acting as if all forms of IP are "owning an idea" is a weird take.

I'd like to put forward the argument that software _patents_ are the IP that most closely resembles the IP the author seems to hate, and the source of much of the troubles associated with IP in the sofware industry. Additionally, abolishing software patents is a realistic short team goal we can work towards, while abolishing all IP is too extreme to get the average developer on board with.

burntsushi21• 6 years ago

however, acting as if all forms of IP are "owning an idea" is a weird take.

Maybe you don't like my phrasing? But fundamentally, intellectual property is a form of property that includes intangible things. How can intangible things be owned? Intangible things aren't scarce.

Software isn't an idea. It required real work of a scarce-ish resource (software dev time) to create that software. You could make the argument that software, unlike a physical good, can be copied at almost no cost after creation

It's not about the work required to create it or even the work required to copy it. The point is that it's not scarce. That is, I can use a copy of the software without inhibiting your simultaneous use of it. This is a fundamental difference from a physical good. My use of a physical good inherently inhibits your use. This creates conflict and property is a vehicle for resolving that conflict peacefully.

I'd like to put forward the argument that software _patents_ are the IP that most closely resembles the IP the author seems to hate

I undoubtedly hate software patents. But I probably hate patents in the healthcare industry even more, because I perceive them as probably causing even more harm than software patents.

My article is just biased towards issues in software because that's what I have the most experience with.

saagarjha4• 6 years ago

How can intangible things be owned? Intangible things aren't scarce.

Surely you own money?

It's not about the work required to create it or even the work required to copy it. The point is that it's not scarce.

Right, the copying part is "free". The thing that software licenses try to protect, the part which is not free, is the effort that goes into making software. The end product is not scarce, but the materials that go into it are. So the thing that these licenses are doing is slapping on a "price" at a strange step in the pipeline–but only because copyright law is strange that way, and for open source projects it is hard to add value to the creation process anyways.

mgraczyk2• 6 years ago

Why should it be the case that non-scare resources cannot be owned? What if there were pragmatic reasons for providing property protections to certain non-scare resources?

I think your argument would be more convincing with some justification as to why scarcity ought to be necessary for property protections.

Property can be conceptualized as a social technology, an idea that is useful for solving problems and accomplishing goals. In that alternative view, we should apply property protections in cases where it's useful, regardless of scarcity.

dragonwriter2• 6 years ago

How can intangible things be owned?

The same way anything else can be; “ownership” is the legal right to exclude others from some set of actions with regard to something. Whether the something is tangible or not is basically immaterial, except as tongue set of possible actions that might be governed by ownership.

Intangible things aren't scarce.

So? Property is about structuring incentives to create value, it is not intrinsically tied to scarcity (except that property—the legal exclusive privilege—is inherently scarce even if it's subject is not.)

CaptArmchair2• 6 years ago

The point is that it's not scarce. That is, I can use a copy of the software without inhibiting your simultaneous use of it.

That depends. You could view the idea in it's abstract, intangible form; and then the manifestation of that idea in the real word, as symbols (letters, numbers, drawings, notes,...) which reflect that idea. When you download code, you ultimately make a copy of manifestation represented as electromagnetic signals encoded as digital symbols.

The process of having a novel idea consists of assembling mental constructs together as a thought proces and then expressing that through shared social constructs (language, art, symbols,...). What is protected by IP is your claim to be the first person - the original author - having had the idea. Not the idea itself.

The opposite of that is not making that distinction, collapsing the process of making copies of the manifestation of an idea, and having the idea itself into one. This would imply that being the first to have constructed a novel idea is no argument for a claim to intellectual ownership.

The real problem with copyright, though, isn't making that first claim. It's the abstract notion that rights to claim IP can be extended and transferred. Which creates a very different can of worms.

BerislavLopac3• 6 years ago

intellectual property is a form of property that includes intangible things

What we call "intellectual property" is not "property" at all - it's simply a government-enforced monopoly on use of certain ideas (in case of patents) or their expressions (for copyright and trademarks).

yiyus2• 6 years ago

Intangible things aren't scarce.

That's not true. Time is scarce. Good ideas are scarce (maybe because intelligence is scarce too). Beauty is scarce. Quality of life is scarce. Perfection is terribly scarce...

And I consider that I own my time, for example. I can either consume it myself or I can use it to serve something or someone, probably in exchange of some amount of money.

feanaro4• 6 years ago

But fundamentally, intellectual property is a form of property that includes intangible things.

I think the idea of code (or information in general) being intangible has some problems. Point me to information which exists without being encoded in physical phenomena. All information we've ever encountered exists in the form of specific configurations of matter and energy, and is therefore tangible, just as a house or a car is. It is just barely tangible, since there are many more physical configurations which can reasonably encode information than there are physical configurations corresponding to a usable car.

The term scarcity as usually applied to information is also somewhat problematic because it is not applied consistently between "physical" goods and information. Yes, the fact is that information is easy to copy because it is easily encodeable in a wider range of physical configurations. But we cannot reasonably ignore the effort required to produce it if we want to make a fair comparison. The quality we are interested in is how hard it is to obtain, to have something in the first place, not just whether it is easy to copy. Code is easy to copy, but is hard to produce, and hence I would argue it is still a scarce resource in this sense.

My use of a physical good inherently inhibits your use.

Not if you first make your own copy of the physical good, the same way you do with information. You said it yourself: you can use your copy of the software without inhibiting someone's simultaneous use. It's just that information has the boon and burden of being easily copyable once you've initially obtained it.

anticristi4• 6 years ago

I don't get why anyone believes that owning an idea is more abstract that owning a house. I can easily "open" any door with an ax and/or battery-driven grinder. Ownership is a legal construct of a society, meant to incentivese certain behaviours. It comes with both good and bad. This is true both for houses (inner cities are monopolized by the rich) as for software (key technologies being monopolized by few companies).

chordalkeyboard18• 6 years ago

Because exclusive use of a physical item is a fact of nature whereas exclusive use of an idea is a social construct that relies on a coercive social apparatus. The property rights we use for physical items are a social construct that is grounded in reality, whereas intellectual property is a social construct that is derived from a particular value-laden perspective.

raxxorrax• 6 years ago

Well put and understandable. I write proprietary software for embedded systems and I am thankful for people with more permissive licenses.

If I find useful copyleft code I would copy the code to a degree because I read it and cannot forget about it. I do try not to make a simple copy and in most cases it is just a tiny subset of the original, but a case could be made that it is still the same in abstract.

I do think that copyleft should have its place though, it doesn't have to be either/or. Especially in todays world where systems get more and more restrictive, it is a good license to have for some projects and ensures that ideas continue to be shared.

GoblinSlayer4• 6 years ago

I feel code copying is a somewhat overrated problem. Pretty sure everything written before is 80% wrong and must be redesigned, how people resist the urge?

athrowaway3z• 6 years ago

So do you have any thoughts on how to get to a place without intellectual property?

burntsushi21• 6 years ago

No idea. Sadly, history seems to suggest that changes this big only come after some kind of considerable pain. Maybe it's possible to slowly evolve away from it, but I doubt I'll live to see that. As I said, I'm a terrible activist. :-)

The best I've got is to just slowly try to normalize copyright subversion. I try to do that by using the UNLICENSE in the hope that others are exposed to the idea and repeat it if they like it.

feanaro4• 6 years ago

I respect BurntSushi's stance and I think it is a valid one. However, the disapproval of the use of copyright as a hack against itself is ideological in nature and is therefore somewhat contrary to deep practicality.

burntsushi21• 6 years ago

But, I also explained why the hack (in this case, copyleft) is, in practice, contrary to my goal of sharing my code with others. So it's not just ideological.

feanaro4• 6 years ago

True. However, I'm delineating here between the disapproval of the use of copyleft as a mechanism and your personal (and practical) preference to use something else that suits your needs better.

In essence, I think copyleft has its place and its existence is not in opposition with the notion that ideas cannot be owned, but I do see how it doesn't play out well for you practically.

taylodl• 6 years ago

Copyleft licensing aims to use the procedure of law to protect user freedom and provide users legal rights and obligations. Say what you will of RMS but you can't easily argue he wasn't being serious when he created copyleft licensing as a means for providing users with legal protections that would be defensible in a court of law.

burntsushi21• 6 years ago

Eh? My post says nothing about RMS. And I certainly never said copyleft or its proponents weren't serious.

kemonocode• 6 years ago

For me whether or not to use a permissive license for a personal project is pretty easy: if I'm writing a library or trying to promote an open standard, then it'll probably be in my interests that a lot of people use it in their own projects, even if I don't get to see exactly how, so I'll try to make it MIT/BSD licensed. If the code I'm writing is supposed to be an user-facing "finished" product, then it'll probably be in my best interests that if people want to make something based upon it that I'll be able to see some of that work, so I use (A)GPL. Has worked pretty well for me so far, I still believe that the copyright system, and indeed IP law in general is deeply flawed and in dire need for reform, but that's how I make do for now.

karmakaze• 6 years ago

There's a lot of comments about "ideas are not scarce". Here's the bit that mentions it.

Ideologically, it's pretty simple: I don't believe that ideas can be meaningfully owned as property. That is, I see property as a means to non-violently resolve conflict over scarce resources. But ideas are not scarce, and thus, to me, they are not property and thus should not be treated as property. This is a fundamental assumption on which all intellectual property rests, and so, I reject it from first principles.

As I see it, there's some transitive logic being invalidly applied here. The post also says it's from a viewpoint of practicality. I consider the AGPL style licences are being used for practical goals.

Software licensing and my opposition to copyleft

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