@celestia@tech.lgbt Free software isn't even anti-commercial. I don't see the problem. Even their stupid "californian proto-foundation startup" can just use copylefted code if they wanted. They just have to abide by the license.
@Archivist@social.linux.pizza@celestia@tech.lgbt given the amount of efforts required to use GPL code in an even remotely closed source code-base due to the lack of linking exceptionsImplementing GPL code into your proprietary codebase doesn't take any effort all, just do the following:wget https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt
mv gpl-3.0.txt LICENSE.txt
git add --all
git commit -m 'fix: we stopped oppressing our users'
git push origin masterNow set your repo to "public" and congratulations! You can now use GPL code!
@SuperDicq@celestia well, given the amount of efforts required to use GPL code in an even remotely closed source code-base due to the lack of linking exceptions, and the performance penalties associated, I kinda understand why it is a pain given that for many people GPL is the default
@Archivist@social.linux.pizza@celestia@tech.lgbt If you require secrecy to be profitable you're probably doing something unethical. Military contractors can fuck off especially, murder and violence should not be a business.
@SuperDicq@celestia try to ask any large organisation that must maintain some amount of secrecy to be profitable/viable (like a small company or a military contractor)
@Archivist@social.linux.pizza@celestia@tech.lgbt Also consider the military is allowed to do lots of things that civilians aren't allowed to do (like shoot people) I assume they don't have to abide by your copyright license either.
@SuperDicq@Archivist >just do the following: Just adding a LICENSE file legally doesn't mean much.
To license your software correctly, you need to add a license header to each nontrivial file (this is true of any license, not just the GPLv3); <one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.> Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
You don't need to set the repo to "public" - you can choose to only share the repo to people who purchase a copy of the software under section 6d.
Adding a license header is a very good practise, but not required. I don't think any judge is going to disagree that if you put a LICENSE file in the root of the project and none of the files contain a license header that this implies that the license is applied to the whole project.
Adding a license header to every file can easily be done using a little script too.
@SuperDicq >I don't think any judge is going to disagree that if you put a LICENSE file in the root of the project and none of the files contain a license header that this implies that the license is applied to the whole project. The judge may apply common sense and come to that conclusion, but the judge also may not.
Also, it is far too easy to the software and the license to become separated and the result is what should be free software looking like it has no license.
>Adding a license header to every file can easily be done using a little script too. Yes, there's an emacs function that will do it for you.
Why risk it when it's so easy to just add the license header?
@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com I personally wouldn't risk it but I am using a lot of software that does not add license headers. I'm not gonna avoid using software that does not do this.
@Archivist >these people can just then sell back your software as per the same licence, and they can sell it for cheaper than you When has that ever happened with free software?
If people are going to pay for a copy, they're going to purchase it off the developer, and if they aren't going to pay for a copy, they'll get one gratis off someone who has purchased it from the developer, not from some literally who reseller.
Many people sell copies of proprietary software much cheaper than the developer, or even provide copies gratis, but I haven't heard of a case where this has cased financial issues for the developer - only seething about the amount of dollars that the developer imagined they deserved.
@Suiseiseki@SuperDicq yes, but these people can just then sell back your software as per the same licence, and they can sell it for cheaper than you, always
@EdBoatConnoisseur If you want freedom to be ensured, please start doing so.
If you're feeling lazy, at bare minimum you can put a SPDX line in (a SPDX header has no legal significance, but it does allow someone to know the license and be able to confirm the copyright holder via git).
@Archivist I didn't write that, but it is the case that many people who sell software don't follow license terms anyway.
When it comes to proprietary licenses, respecting the license terms to not share and betray humanity is immoral, but not respecting the terms may be illegal - so to be morally pure and also follow the law, one must avoid ever agreeing to a proprietary license.
The GPLv3 gives permission to do everything you would want to do with software, except the immoral act of restricting the freedom, so it is trivial to be moral and also not infringe the terms of the GPLv3.
@Archivist@social.linux.pizza@celestia@tech.lgbt I see open-source devs working of software used by thousands of people collect 300-400 bucks a month and now hesitating to just abandon itMost developers make money by getting paid by the hour to build custom solutions for clients. This is the same for proprietary and free software and makes the same amount of money.
You know what I think? I think most proprietary software companies make unreasonable amount of money. Companies like Microsoft or Adobe or whatever don't need billions of dollars, that money isn't going to developers anyway (they still get paid by the hour, just like the developers of your favorite non-volunteer run free software project), it's mostly going into the pockets of venture capitalists. Saying that everything should be GPL because otherwise it is unethical is just ignoring the 99% of open-source developers that want to try and make it their workAll software should be free software, it doesn't have to be GPL, I'm not saying that. Also the 99% of developers fail statistic you just pulled out of your ass.
@SuperDicq@celestia yeah, that is why 99% of the software has been open-sourced and costs of software development are so low...
Come on, models that revolve around open-source generally revolve around offering support for the open-source software, selling it and praying no-one sells it for cheaper than you do, and donos. I see open-source devs working of software used by thousands of people collect 300-400 bucks a month and now hesitating to just abandon it
IT doesn't have a lot of ways for small actors to profit from it. Saying that everything should be GPL because otherwise it is unethical is just ignoring the 99% of open-source developers that want to try and make it their work, and fail
@newt >You just copy the code and remove any mention of GPL. That is criminal copyright infringement for profit.
A proprietary malware author may get away with copying a line or a data structure or two here and there, but if you end up copying any substantial amount of free software, someone will notice that the software functions far too well for proprietary software and deduce that GPLv2 and/or GPLv3'd free software was used, find out and report that to the copyright holder.
As a result, doing so is pretty much gambling that the copyright holder is going to be a cuck and is not going to demand that you release all derivative works as free software or even demand prison time for you in court.
@Suiseiseki@Archivist Ardour, a gplv3 software aufio workstation sells binaries, the do not provide compilation instructions nor help for ardour but provide support for everything else and i think they even started offering paid support a while back, if you want to run ardour you got 3 options, buy a binary from the developers, get a binary from someone who builds ardour like some linux distributions do, compile ardour for yourself.
So far i've not seen anyone sell ardour binaries, but many linux distributions do compile ardour and have it on their repos.
If you are on m$ windows then you have to buy from ardour or compile it yourself.
@Archivist@social.linux.pizza@celestia@tech.lgbt I can agree that just uploading a software project to the internet and expecting money to just fall into your hands because some people decided to use it is obviously not a viable business model. I'm also not saying that's how people are supposed to make money developing software.
If you wanna get paid to work on free software just go work at an actual company that actually sells something, be it a service or a product. It's not that complicated.
For example I work at a radio advertising network. We simply buy airtime and sell it to advertisers, that's how we make a profit. I get to paid to work on free software almost exclusively, because we need that software to run our business.
We do not try to make a profit selling software, because that would make no sense. Software is just a tool to achieve something for most people, and it is not the main business model for most tech companies.
open-source software is much more profitable to mega-corps
Also, yeah, stat is indeed from my ass, but I would argue that it is very optimistic. Of all the developers I personally know that have tried their hands at making a living wage from working open-source software, I know 0 that succeeded. It may be anecdotal, but that is a sample size of between 300 and 400 given the people I trained, that trained with me or worked with me. A few are still trying, I do what I can to support their projects, because I was there. Unless you were there for so long your software is infrastructure (eg curl, sqlite...) success is nigh impossible nowadays. Open-source was a career choice 20+ years ago, but nowadays if it is profitable it is generally because the free version is open-source freemium
@EdBoatConnoisseur There are many scripts that already do it for you, so I would suggest downloading one of those.
Legally the license header needs to contain 3 things; a. What license the software is under - historically that has always been a written statement that explicitly states; "This software is licensed under x license." and a disclaimer of warranty. b. What year(s) the software was published in, so people can know when the copyright expires after an eternity. c. The name of the copyright holder.
@Suiseiseki Alternatively i'm thinking now of writing some sed or maybe even awk script to put license information on the header, is it enough to just specify the license type and copyright/copyleft holdr?
That license has had many issues identified and is not recommended for usage except when you need to be compatible with GPLv2-only software and even then, you should license GPLv2-or-later.
@Archivist@social.linux.pizza@celestia@tech.lgbt Simply dumping your project online and asking nothing in return and then complaining that "open source is not a viable to make a living" sounds so stupid and very entitled to me.
If you want to make money maybe build an actual business first instead? Then use the money you make to improve the tools and not the other way around?
@SuperDicq@Archivist To be honest, it doesn't matter how skilled you are at anything, it comes down to luck in the end, considering that most new businesses fail.
@apophis@brain.worm.pink@Archivist@social.linux.pizza@celestia@tech.lgbt The correct moral compass according to permissive licensing fans: "I'll take this codebase and I will oppress my users with it"This is fine, thank you for using my software. "You can do anything you want with my software except take away the freedom of others"Nooooo heckerino! You can't do that! How the heck are rich people going to make even more money if you do that?!
@Archivist@SuperDicq@celestia i see where you're coming from here but i also note that OP was specifically referencing someone who was trying to get an MPL code relicenced to something more permissive
and also... given how so many corporate types these days seem to have no ideas beyond business models that rely overwhelmingly on manufactured scarcity and obfuscation, i would take a request for a more permissive licence to be presumptively* a bad sign
*rebuttable by, e.g., some clear pressing reason (existing game modding community, etc.) why something *had* to work alongside proprietary data
@Archivist@social.linux.pizza@apophis@brain.worm.pink@celestia@tech.lgbt MIT or other similarly permissive licenses most likely make it impossible for the "people at the bottom of the ladder" to get their hands on a free copy of the source code, as it might be included into a proprietary program by the time your code reaches them.
A copylefted license, like the GPL for example, ensures that everyone on every position of this "ladder" has the same rights.
@SuperDicq@apophis@celestia I license everything I do under MIT, I do not give a fuck about rich people. I give a fuck about poor people and people that are trying to build things at the bottom of the ladder. If you think GPL makes it hard for a megacorp to use your code, you are sorely mistaken, it is just a minor inconvenience to them
@Suiseiseki@newt Copy pasting GPL code into corporate software is pretty common practice. Winamp got away with it for almost 30 years and no one noticed until they outed themselves. The case would have to be as high profile as John Deere before anyone started caring, and even then they haven't been punished for GPL violations.
@apophis Filing DMCA claims works just fine provided the copyright holder files them, although DMCA's are designed to be mostly business exclusive, as to file them you need to pretty much dox yourself, which is fine for a business with a publicly listed address anyway, but is bad for an individual.
It could be argued that the GPLv2 and GPLv3 gives the user the permission to file DMCA claims on behalf of the developer, although businesses are likely to ignore such filings.
@SuperDicq Don't forget that MIT has released many licenses and you probably want to write MIT expat.
I call them weak licenses, as the GNU family of licenses does give permission to use the software for any purpose - they just don't give you the power to take freedom away from others.
>as it might be included into a proprietary program by the time your code reaches them. Rather than "might", for weakly licensed software, it is almost a guarantee that most users end up using a proprietary version that doesn't respect their freedom.
@parker >Free software developers are unlikely to get anything once the lawyers have their cut, Free software developers are more interested in the software respecting the users freedom rather than how many dollars they get.
If the legal costs are at least covered, that's a total win.
>corporations will either avoid GPL entirely It's only a good thing if corporations finally stop criminally integrating GPLv2 and GPLv3 code into their proprietary software, as the result is that their software no longer functionally competes with the real thing and the proprietary temptation is less alluring than the real thing.
Every time I notice a reasonably functional piece of proprietary software that doesn't suck, I look inside and see GPLv2 or GPLv3 licensed code that actually implements the functionality.
There are quite a few corporations that actually follow the terms of the GPLv2 and GPLv3 and those aren't going to avoid it because someone who didn't follow the terms got sued.
>likely lean harder into SaaS, an even crummier option. This is why you license AGPLv3-or-later.
@Suiseiseki Not really, the original developers closed down 10 years ago, the current owners of the code would as soon declare bankruptcy as they would pay fines or fight a legal battle.
Regardless, if the enforcement process is just beginning, I don't see that as much more than a feeding frenzy for lawyers, at least regarding GPLv3. Free software developers are unlikely to get anything once the lawyers have their cut, and corporations will either avoid GPL entirely or more likely lean harder into SaaS, an even crummier option.
@parker >current owners of the code I can't believe I missed this massive error at first.
Copyright is held and not owned, otherwise copyright would never expire, just like how a house you own doesn't fall into the public domain after a set number of years.
Most of winamp appears to be free software that actually implements everything, although there is code that implements a GUI (in Qt) and some proprietary libraries.
The original authors could have sold the copyright of their code to another party, but the sale of a copy of the current code in its current state was not legal, as it appears there is a mix of incompatible licenses and a lot of deleted copyright headers.
@EdBoatConnoisseur The GPLv2 license text leaves it ambiguous whether the software is licensed -only or -or-later, but it gives an example license header to license -or-later; one line to give the program's name and an idea of what it does. Copyright (C) yyyy name of author
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
Even though you should not, you can modify it to license -only; one line to give the program's name and an idea of what it does. Copyright (C) yyyy name of author
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; only version 2 of the License.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
If you're really lazy, you can just add a SPDX header and a copyright line; // SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later // Copyright (C) yyyy name of author
// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only // Copyright (C) yyyy name of author
(Yes, some clowns "helpfully" add a SPDX header that is just "GPL-2.0").
Note that the SPDX header has no legal significance, although it does let people know what the license is.
@Suiseiseki ah right the like 6 shits i got that are gplv2 only: megawrap wraps megatools, so it uses the same license as megatools. dash widgets contains a file from a not yet merged awesome wm pull request, so it has the same license. betterxsecurelock wraps xsecurelock and other programs, don't remember but i think most of the wrapped programs only go up to gplv2, may be able to use gplv2 or later there. i'm pretty sure that for systemact and afreq.sh i just copied the licenses from awkat, while for awkat i think i just did sed 1q and copied whatever license said "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE" without checking if it was 2 or 3, i think changing those to gplv2-or-later may be okay.