If you care about software, why would non-commercial licenses be fine under any condition?
First rule of free software is any goal, including commercial ones.
> MIT is the "wait, no, not like that" license
I don't get this. Someone who releases their under MIT, GPL or AGPL allows selling a copy on amazon and could think "wait, no, not like that" regardless.
I think the reasonable stance is to (kindly, humanly) ask, that one doesn't do such or such thing even if it's legal.
Because the right attitude, IMO, is reciprocal altruism.
You can use the thing for experimentation for free because why not.
You can use the thing in your free thing for free because you are giving back to the world.
If you want to use the thing in a non-free thing, you are no longer being altruistic so I won't either. You can use it, but the rule of "fuck you pay me" applies. I am not volunteering for a for-profit company. You're for-profit, so pay your workers.
To implement this principle, the strictest GPL you can find (currently AGPLv3 or even SSPL) works and is open-source compatible, but I think non-commercial licenses also work, provided you can also get a commercial one. They have a problem if the company that produced the software disappears. AGPL probably works better.
I think it's fine if Amazon hosts a modified version of a free thing, for money, if they release the source code to their modified version. All of their value is then coming from the hosting, not the modifications.
"First rule of free software is any goal, including commercial ones."
Yeah and that's what we disagree with. :P If Creative Commons has NC licences for art, why shouldn't software? Apart from programmers being too meek to assert their rights.
And yes, the OSI is mostly hyperscalers, that's fairly commonly known. They aren't interested in protecting the commons the slightest.
Even the JSON licence ("don't be evil") and stuff like that are better than MIT and friends - gives enough of a headache for bigcorp lawyers to think twice before stealing your stuff.
You were at least consistent up until this point, but this phrasing runs directly counter to the rest of your thesis. It's not stealing to use software that you put out as FOSS to be used by anyone for any purpose. If you didn't intend to do that, that's on you to have picked a license that reflected your intentions and to accept the consequences of that choice (mostly likely less interest in using it from everyone, not just megacorps).
There's no moral imperative to respect terms of use that existed only in the head of the developer—on the contrary, it's an immoral bait-and-switch to release your code as FOSS and then throw a fit when someone uses it to make money.
MIT explicitly gives the right to sublicense. That means you give certain rights to Alice, who gives fewer rights to Bob. Bob isn't allowed to give away copies of the software Alice gives her, because Alice, being a smart businesswoman, made sure Bob's license agreement is a proprietary one. She's not violating MIT, because she put your name and a copy of the MIT license in notices.txt, but the license doesn't actually apply to the software.
I think when you take something from the public domain and make it proprietary, that is close enough to stealing that it's appropriate to use the word colloquially.
Only if what you took from the public domain is actually taken—as in, no longer available to the public. The scarcity model that we use for the literal commons (the shared fields in a village) doesn't apply when we're talking about bits.
I think TFA is onto something by pointing out that there are very real ways that some of the recent use of the commons falls into the realm of abuse that harms the commons. But most of the kinds of usage that has people giving up on FOSS doesn't actually fall into that category.
You are entirely right about my word choice, good point! (it's a bit ironic in retrospect)
However, let's not pretend that choosing a licence is a fully informed decision free of any kind of pressure. If you pick a non-OSI licence, that has social costs (as you said, less interest from other developers for example)
The problem is two-sided: both those companies exploiting the FOSS landscape and the participants in the FOSS landscape more concerning themselves with uploading the status quo than to try to do something about the problem.
P.S.: The OSI are not even sellouts - they mostly consist of exactly those corporations themselves. The FSF are much better but the FSF's philosophy was mostly informed by RMS not being able to fix his printer in the 80's.... times change, y'know? A philosophy/worldview which worked for the 80s and the 90s might not be appropriate for the 2020s.
> If you pick a non-OSI licence, that has social costs (as you said, less interest from other developers for example)
Yes. People make a decision to choose from the FOSS licenses because being seen as FOSS is valuable to them. That comes with tradeoffs, and it's unethical to expect to receive the benefits but not the drawbacks of your chosen license.
> P.S.: The OSI are not even sellouts - they mostly consist of exactly those corporations themselves.
I know. I find the bellyaching about the "spirit of Open Source" to be pretty ironic given that Open Source exists to "dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had been associated with "free software" in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape" [0].
> those companies exploiting the FOSS landscape
Exploiting how? What harm does $MEGACORP using a FOSS project do to the FOSS project? Does it hurt that it gives them more credibility? For there to be exploitation there has to be a quantifiable harm to the exploited victim—it has to be win-lose, not win-neutral or win-win. So where's the loss to the FOSS maintainers as victims?
There's nothing to disagree about. Free software is a definition.
Now we can talk about whether this is desirable of course, but this is not a discussion to put under "if you care about free software", that would be contradictory.
> If Creative Commons has NC licences for art, why shouldn't software?
CC NC licenses are non-free. And I certainly think there are things under CC ND that shouldn't (not speaking about all art, especially art that's not meant to have derivatives - especially art that's the expression of very personal emotions or views - I'm not set on this and CC has another clause for this: ND).
> Even the JSON licence ("don't be evil")
Yeah, no thanks. That was painful. Evil wasn't even defined.
If you think something is evil, software license are not the right tools. Lobbying for the law to change and spreading the word is much more effective for this, broader, more universal, has the chance to be more impactful.
If it's GPL, or AGPL, someone can sell a copy on Amazon, but it's pretty pointless because the person who buys it is allowed to give away more copies for free.
If it's MIT, the person who buys it ISN'T allowed to give away more copies for free if the seller doesn't want them to. MIT means SOMEONE ELSE can (for all practical purposes) copyright YOUR software, and all you get is your name in a notices.txt file.
> If it's GPL, or AGPL, someone can [...]. If it's MIT, the person who buys it ISN'T allowed to [...]
MIT gives strictly more rights to the user than GPL. If you can do something under the (A)GPL, you can definitely do so under MIT. In all cases, as someone who receives a copy, you are allowed to sell copies regardless. Under the (A)GPL, you will need to provide the sources on request as well.
> MIT means SOMEONE ELSE can (for all practical purposes) copyright YOUR software
You always keep the copyright on your code (unless there is a copyright assignment), regardless of the license.
MIT allows someone else to not share the source when redistributing some software under MIT or a derivative.
MIT gives the user the right to take away another user's rights, potentially leading to fewer rights overall.
I give foobar to Alice under AGPL. Alice gives foobar to Bob, Carol, and Dave, under AGPL so I don't sue her.
I give barbaz to Alice. It's MIT. Alice gives barbaz to Bob, Carol and Dave under a proprietary license. I can't do anything about it, because I gave her that right.
They should have put Free Software in capitals to be more clear, but they're referring to the Four Essential Freedoms as defined by the Free Software Foundation [0]:
> The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). ... “Free software” does not mean “noncommercial.” On the contrary, a free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. This policy is of fundamental importance—without this, free software could not achieve its aims.
You're welcome to come up with a different set of coherent rules for an ethical model of software development, but to avoid confusion it would be best to use a different label than "free software" so we don't overload the term with conflicting definitions.
First rule of free software is any goal, including commercial ones.
> MIT is the "wait, no, not like that" license
I don't get this. Someone who releases their under MIT, GPL or AGPL allows selling a copy on amazon and could think "wait, no, not like that" regardless.
I think the reasonable stance is to (kindly, humanly) ask, that one doesn't do such or such thing even if it's legal.