[kwlug-disc] Permissive vs copyleft licenses

[Jason Eckert]

> And if you choose the GPL be prepared to be burned because nobody
> wants to use or contribute to your project.

> As I get older and grumpier I increasingly feel that the FLOSS movement
> succeeded not because of the licensing, but because it was a movement
> (what we call "network effects" these days). If you have lots of users
> and enough contributors, you are powerful. If not then you are
> irrelevant. If GPL projects can attract the kind of momentum they need
> to thrive, then that is great. But it seems easier to attract
> contributors (in particular, contributors with deep pockets) for
> BSD-style licensing.

If I was eloquent enough to put my own open source observations over the
past 3 decades into words, they'd mirror Paul's here.

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 3:53 PM Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc <
kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 12:17:15PM -0500, Mikalai Birukou via kwlug-disc
> wrote:
> >
> > Let me correct
> >
>
> > GNU and Linux come with an advantage of many people contributing to
> > it. When you personally pay a person to write code, may be that
> > person will not mind that her work is BSD licensed. But when you
> > know that your code is used by those folks (subconsciousness uses
> > Forbes' cover image to visualize), they get benefit and you get bug
> > requests, then any internal drive for contributing evaporates.
>
> >
> > Advantage of GPL is in a volume and diversity of code.
> >
> > > There was never any dispute to its origins such as BSD had to extract
> > > itself from (and is now fully extracted from).
> >
>
> > Let's repeat again for anyone who starts public projects. Use GPL
> > and some anti-cloud clauses. Interested people will contribute back.
> > If a big co comes by, they will have to negotiate, and cut a cheque.
> > If you choose BSD style license be ready to be burned by regret from
> > inside(!).
>
> And if you choose the GPL be prepared to be burned because nobody
> wants to use or contribute to your project.
>
> As I get older and grumpier I increasingly feel that the FLOSS movement
> succeeded not because of the licensing, but because it was a movement
> (what we call "network effects" these days). If you have lots of users
> and enough contributors, you are powerful. If not then you are
> irrelevant. If GPL projects can attract the kind of momentum they need
> to thrive, then that is great. But it seems easier to attract
> contributors (in particular, contributors with deep pockets) for
> BSD-style licensing.
>
> > Situation of code release from some university under BSD is not
> > comparable to someone labouring on kernel in their free time, not
> > paid to do this.
>
> I am also sufficiently old and grumpty to feel that people building
> kernels in their spare time is not sustainable either. Maybe I am
> wrong.
>
> - Paul
>
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