8 ms·

I changed my license

153 points by jllyhill 11d ago

nextaccountic 4d ago
This doesn't say why you didn't choose AGPL. Did you consider it? EUPL isn't compatible with either AGPL or GPL, which seems weird for a new copyleft license
jruohonen 11d ago
CC BY-NC-ND is what I'm also increasingly using (for non-code), though not always, and disheartenedly. (And as commented, the non-code context is different.)
- hypfer 11d ago
  ND is usually a bit sad, as it makes the thing a dead-end. The magic of the web has always been that things would continuously morph through being reinterpreted and all, and that just doesn't happen with ND. I can of course see the valid reasons why one would pick that license, but it's still.. kinda sad that it's culturally dead.
  - jruohonen 11d ago
    True enough; philosophically, I am still in the BY camp (a.k.a. BSD/MIT/etc.), and I do not particularly care about the NC part, but ND is increasingly important for non-code. But if they could do even the BY properly, it would be a step to the right direction (and, to some extent, I think they're doing that).
    - hypfer 11d ago
      Huh. Can you elaborate why you view ND as increasingly important, whereas NC bothers you less? Because for me, it would be the exact other way round.
      - jruohonen 11d ago
        ND is important for those who do "authoritative writing" (for a lack of a better term); i.e., when you write with your real name, you do not want nonsense and disinformation associated with your name.
        hypfer 11d ago
        Ah, yeah, in the meanwhile I've also googled your nick and saw that you're in academics. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
        ghaff 11d ago
        Yes, I think of it more in the context of photo and video integrity, but you can certainly imagine an unscrupulous individual rewriting something and changing the meaning. Of course, I doubt a license would stop that person.
        roundabout-host 11d ago
        Doesn't CC BY require to say what you changed?
        skeledrew 11d ago
        If a person would ignore one part of a license, they may also ignore other parts.
        yjftsjthsd-h 11d ago
        ... Then why would they care that it's ND?
        ghaff 11d ago
        Not really. You're supposed to attribute the original creator. And if I did make major changes/additions I'd find some way to flag that. But you don't have a Github-style change log.
  - ghaff 11d ago
    I discussed NC in my other comment. But, yes, ND is arguably counter the whole remix culture that was supposedly part of the impetus for Creative Commons in the first place. I do kind of see the logic behind prohibiting, say, a remix of a video or photo in a way that misrepresents the subject. But I also don't particularly like it.
- ghaff 11d ago
  The problem is that not even Creative Commons was able to come up with a real definition for non-commercial when they last (I think) revised the license. Essentially it means trivial uses (a photo in a grade school assignment) or its contentious in a way that reasonable people can disagree about. What constitutes acceptable usage of a properly attributed photo? Personally, I just properly attribute and stopped worry about whether most presentations constituted commercial use or not.
- Brian_K_White 11d ago
  BY-SA As both a consumer and producer, NC makes it kind of a pointless untouchable dead end even if I never intend to make a business out of something. A lot of unintended things could be argued as commecial and who wants to risk it? If I do something purely as ahobby, and along the way make a youtube video about it, and that video pays money, I suddenly become techically in violation of non-commercial. Or I use it in a class where I was paid to teach. Or any number of ordinary possible uses that along the way do involve an exchange of money. Let alone the freedom to change my mind in 5 years and decide I do want to sell something I made that initially I didn't. I don't know what I might want to do tomorrow, so best to just not invest any of my time or effort into anything that might bite me later. ND is 100x worse. Why even bother publishing a design at all then? Just sell your commercial propeietary product, and any users who want the plans you can just sell them more service for support and customization instead. So I only apply BY-SA to be as similar to classic GPL as possible, and it's no problem at all if there is a business that can't accept the SA terms. It doesn't prevent selling a product, it just prevents being a dick and a thief (well on paper anyway, of course they go ahead and steal anyway but that's a different problem). If I ever had something where I didn't want anyone else to be able to sell it, I just wouldn't publish it at all in the first place.
  - ghaff 11d ago
    I wouldn't use an NC photo on a big company stage or in a marketing campaign. But I sort of convinced myself I wasn't being directly paid for most of the presentations that I did and do, so it was OK enough. And I don't materially rework most photos or text.
- RobotToaster 11d ago
  NC is a huge pain as it can be difficult to define commercial use, and it's often defined differently in different countries. https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC https://www.techdirt.com/2014/03/27/german-court-says-creative-commons-non-commercial-licenses-must-be-purely-personal-use/ https://www.techdirt.com/2014/03/27/german-court-says-creati...
  - mark_l_watson 11d ago
    And NC doesn’t always work. I use no commercial reuse (NC) yet years ago a polite young man from China emailed me letting me know that he was translating my stuff to resell under his name for money. To be honest, I didn’t mind and it made a good story to tell friends and family.
    - ghaff 11d ago
      I had something similar happen with a book I wrote through a publisher. I went radio silence on him. Would have required contacting my publisher and I didn't need the hassle.
  - ghaff 10d ago
    That's one of the reasons that defining NC broke down in the latest round of CC license revisions. Sure, even in the US, define NC as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. But that doesn't mean some mom-and-pop charity you agree with. It can easily mean a non-profit with goals you totally disagree with. And how about 501(c)(6)s like the NFL? And that's just US tax law.
- mark_l_watson 11d ago
  I have been releasing books under Creative Commons for 20+ years. Share alike, no modifications, no commercial reuse. I sell my books via Leanpub (my books https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson) and they can all be read free online (recommended to see if you like them), and if purchased the price can be reset to free, zero cost. I like CC because I like my books to be read and I still make money. When people choose to pay I use that as a signal for which topics to put future effort into. My wife has been my editor for ever, so this is a family business. EDIT: over 20 years ago, I was what I think was Larry Lessig’s second ‘Featured Commoner’ and that was fun because they interviewed me and posted the interview in the CC web site.
  - sph 10d ago
    I recognize your nickname because I have always enjoyed your comments on Lisp on here, so I checked out the site and disappointingly because of topic and appearance, look like AI slop to me. As there's no publication date listed, and I'm particularly intolerant to slop, can you recommend a book of yours published before Autumn 2022?
    - mark_l_watson 10d ago
      My older books have real photographs on them (e.g., https://leanpub.com/lovinglisp https://leanpub.com/lovinglisp) and newer ones have AI generated covers and some have AI generated figures. Look for books with photos I have taken of nature - those are the old books (exception is Java AI book that is 90% very old material, but has a new AI generated cover). In the last year I have started vibe coding a lot, but I still take personal ownership of my latest code examples because I set requirements and provide a design, and ask AI coding harnesses to let me run and test the code so I tweak it. Anyway, it still feels like mostly my code and I prefer the new AI + Mark code over what I used to produce. This has been a strange ride! I learned to program in 1965 and have always loved coding, but it is a weird new world we live in, my friend.
LoganDark 11d ago
I don't like the phrasing of the EUPL because it says you have rights full stop and then in a later section it says there are actually conditions. For that reason I would not immediately be sure the conditions are even enforceable, other than "this was surely made by lawyers and therefore also surely valid". Aside from that, it is nice to see Communication counted alongside Distribution; this should have been done from the start IMO.
- jraph 11d ago
  > I don't like the phrasing of the EUPL because it says you have rights full stop and then in a later section it says there are actually conditions. For that reason I would not immediately be sure the conditions are even enforceable. Full right to use no conditions ≠ full right on what you can do with the code
  - LoganDark 11d ago
    > Full right to use no conditions ≠ full right on what you can do with the code 2. Scope of the rights granted by the Licence The Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable licence to do the following, for the duration of copyright vested in the Original Work: - use the Work in any circumstance and for all usage, - reproduce the Work, - modify the Work, and make Derivative Works based upon the Work, - communicate to the public, including the right to make available or display the Work or copies thereof to the public and perform publicly, as the case may be, the Work, - distribute the Work or copies thereof, - lend and rent the Work or copies thereof, - sublicense rights in the Work or copies thereof. Those rights can be exercised on any media, supports and formats, whether now known or later invented, as far as the applicable law permits so. In the countries where moral rights apply, the Licensor waives his right to exercise his moral right to the extent allowed by law in order to make effective the licence of the economic rights here above listed. The Licensor grants to the Licensee royalty-free, non-exclusive usage rights to any patents held by the Licensor, to the extent necessary to make use of the rights granted on the Work under this Licence. This is a lot more rights than just to use and there is absolutely nothing about conditions in this entire section. There's not even a hint of conditions until three sections later, in section 5 where it starts modifying section 2, which feels messy to me.
amazingamazing 11d ago
Do these types of things really matter anymore? If you have tokens, given the source is available pretty easy to reimplement with plausible deniability.
- Joel_Mckay 11d ago
  As much as I dislike isomorphic plagiarism, your point is very valid... It is a viable argument, and people shouldn't bury such insights given the estimated $9Tn worth of opensource work that was appropriated. =3
- ChocolateGod 11d ago
  I think there's been a mistake in the thinking that restricting the licensing on open source projects will make the companies that use them as a service would make them contribute. They don't, the companies just replace the software in question.
- andxor 11d ago
  It's a quixotic crusade, in perfect European style.
  - janfoeh 11d ago
    Yes, how quixotic of them. They really should have foreseen this when they published the license … checks notes … close to twenty years ago.
- KronisLV 11d ago
  https://malus.sh/ https://malus.sh/ (I think it was intended to be satire/critique)
- deleted 11d ago
  [deleted]
- lionkor 11d ago
  If you think an LLM can just implement e.g. an alternative to the Linux kernel from scratch (or any other GPL licensed software), you might be falling for the marketing. Have you seen LLMs build large, stable, pieces of software, that work well, with your own eyes? I have not. I have seen LLMs build small, well-understood things, and I've seen LLMs do super well with extremely well specified problems, but all the rest seems to be marketing (i.e. I couldn't observe or reproduce it). Edit: I'm not talking about throwaway slop that just needs to run long enough to get funding.
Joel_Mckay 11d ago
For FOSS I personally prefer Apache 2.0 license, as 10 years from now I have no idea what people will need for their projects. Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work. Just don't redirect commercial support tickets onto community projects, or get neglected customers to contact authors. The way I see it... is symbiotic commercial relationships are important, as people can get their time sponsored to work on FOSS code. Also, having community projects form reliable long term infrastructure opens additional opportunity for people to work with FOSS options. Telling people how they should have fun is always lame... whether it is Sony/Microsoft... or just some disillusioned dude convinced their work won't be obfuscated by an LLM in 30 seconds. =3
- ricardobeat 11d ago
  This, for some reason, has become a controversial idea — as evidenced by your comment being downvoted. I don’t understand what angle people are coming from, when they disregard the community effects of open-source software entirely. If your main goal is to make money, there is absolutely nothing wrong with building a business instead.
  - Joel_Mckay 11d ago
    If people have a rational self-interest in helping build great works, than the projects simply manifest out of necessity. There is zero benefit in assuming everything is a zero-sum game. With billions of people online someone is always having the best or worst day of their lives. I rather people be honest about what they think, and trust respectful disagreement is welcome. Have a great day =3
- broodbucket 11d ago
  >Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work Copyleft doesn't say that they can't, it says they have to make their changes available
  - Joel_Mckay 11d ago
dotancohen 11d ago
This article would do better if it simply enumerated the problems with the LGPL and addressed how this new license which I've never heard of addresses those problems. This hinting and alluding might make great SEO, but that's fit for neither the audience of people producing software, nor for HN.
- KronisLV 11d ago
  Here's the license text if someone wants to do the work: https://spdx.org/licenses/EUPL-1.2.html#licenseText https://spdx.org/licenses/EUPL-1.2.html#licenseText
  - LoganDark 11d ago
    This is the actual license text, in English: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/custom-page/attachment/2020-03/EUPL-1.2%20EN.txt https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/file... Other languages can be found here: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/eupl-text-eupl-12 https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/eu...
- LoganDark 11d ago
  The article seems pretty clear that the LGPL is too weak compared to the EUPL for this author, and one of the main concerns is the "SaaS loophole" which I assume would be addressed by the AGPL but also seems addressed by the EUPL.
  - brainwad 11d ago
    But the EUPL itself says that derivative works may be distributed under the LGPL instead, as long as those works are derived from both a EUPL and LGPL parent. This seems kinda trivial to abuse and the author should have noticed this clause if that was their main concern.
    - LoganDark 11d ago
      Huh, that's a pretty massive loophole. Pretty much makes the whole license irrelevant.
mnahkies 11d ago
What are people's thoughts/experiences about dual licencing? Eg: is there a clean way to dual license such that hobbyist, and exploratory work (eg: a proof of concept done in a commercial setting) are allowed, but using it in production requires a fee? If you've done this, has it been successful? Obviously there's been many projects relicense over recent years (terraform, redis, etc) - but it's less clear to me if this is a viable path for new projects starting out, or if it just kills adoption from the beginning.
- RobotToaster 11d ago
  The usual way I've seen it work is using the AGPL. AGPL doesn't bar use in commercial production, but the requirements usually scare off any corporate from using it in production.
  - mark_l_watson 11d ago
    I like the AGPL but don’t often use it. (I did recently license two coding harnesses I wrote as AGPL.) A long time ago, I didn’t mind huge tech companies getting rich partially via open source, now I do. In the USA the collusion between government and big tech is starting to smell a little bit like fascism. Sorry, I have only complaints, not any good answers.
    - ValdikSS 11d ago
      >A long time ago, I didn’t mind huge tech companies getting rich partially via open source, now I do. Is the concern that anybody will be earning money on your software (just that), or that you won't get any money, or that they will earn money and don't give back the code? If the company earns money and opens the code, is that OK for you? Just for you and for everyone information, Richard Stallman himself told people not only to sell their own software, but the software written by others as well! > Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising to you, please read on. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html AGPL, just as all other GPL, does not prohibit selling the software. If you goal is to make your software unsellable, please use your own licensing terms (there's nothing wrong with that!!!)
ricardobeat 11d ago
> We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires. As a long-time developer and consumer of OSS I have to disagree. Open-source software has had an enormous effect on the world, and that... was kind of the point? When we licensed things as MIT we knew that corporations would use it. We wanted them to use them, adopt them and bring new users into the community. You take some, you give back. There was no expectation of turning your late-afternoons JS framework into a business. And not having access to it would absolutely not have stopped corporate behemoths from getting where they are, but would have killed many small businesses and startups. That said, I've started licensing some of my code with the BUSL license [1] - unrestricted use, unless you are a large company. The code becomes MIT-licensed automatically after a set window to remove maintainability concerns. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License
- LtWorf 11d ago
  But why should I work for free so that companies can fire my fellow human beings?
  - deleted 11d ago
    [deleted]
  - brainwad 11d ago
    The causality is wrong here. You chose to work for free with no reward, and _then_ companies found your work and used it. Presumably you started out working for free because it was intrinsically rewarding (otherwise: stop doing work you hate for free?).
    - LtWorf 11d ago
      I chose to do it for free to help other people. And picking a MIT license does the opposite.
BlackRabbit1 11d ago
For hardware/electronics I also recommend looking at the CERN OHL licenses. They cover a very specific niche GPL/AGPL/etc. do not cover properly.
charcircuit 11d ago
>All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires. This is not true. Open source is fundamental to how easy users can create software in the LLM era. Users and developers have gained tremendous value. Saying they have gained little is simply false. And it's a good thing to make it possible for big corporations to make things cheaper. It means more efficient resource allocation for society. And for billionaires to turn into trillionaire they have to provide magnitudes more value to society in order to do so. Enabling people to provide trillions of dollars of value to society is a good thing that open source unlocks.
- kypro 11d ago
  Also theres not multiple trillionaires in the world, and the one trillionaire we have did that largely by innovating and creating new stuff rather than just leveraging existing OSS for profit...
- zelphirkalt 11d ago
  Rather feels like post LLMs being everywhere, salary levels for developers are dropping left and right. Where did we gain value?
apt-get 11d ago
Worth noting that the "escape hatch" clauses in the EUPL that allow converting it into other licenses mean it's only ever as strong as the weakest license it names for such an operation, AKA EPL/MPL/LGPL. Any actor that wants to mess around with providing a closed extension on a network service can exercise that option with an EUPL codebase, so if you care about that, you're better off explicitly naming the AGPL or whatnot. EUPL is built for government agencies first, and most of the focus is ensuring that nobody has to worry about mix-and-matching it with other copyleft licenses, plus legal language that covers and harmonizes variations in notions of copyright/patents/intellectual property across EU countries, not so much waging war against hyperscalers. (But it's still great to have around!)
- throwaway89201 11d ago
  You are describing the compatibility clause as if it's settled that the EUPL simply allows you to convert to a compatible license. The compatibility clause is an unfortunate ambiguity, but it's not the intention of the license authors to lose strong copyleft and SaaS loophole protections this way. See for example here [1] [2] [3]. [1] https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/discussion/ultimately-how-copyleft-eupl https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/di... [2] https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/how-use-eupl https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/ho... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45422512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45422512
  - Luker88 11d ago
    The way I read all of that is that: * BigTech can take your EUPL library and write a small wrapper in MPL * such a wrapper can therefore be used in any project, even a closed one that is a network service. * however all of that still qualifies as distributing EUPL, and the EUPL core would still need to be made available under EUPL (whether modified or not). Saying that since I have an MPL wrapper then all the code is MPL is not allowed. So you can't just copy all the code and change the license to MPL. This is basically AGPL without virality and anti-tivo, correct?
alturp 11d ago
> "Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires." Claiming this and afterwards deciding to use a weak copy left license like EUPL (which can be integrated with proprietary software without disclosing source code) instead of AGPLv3, which really closes SaaS loop is a bit lost to me.
- codemog 11d ago
  Also there’s only one trillionaire and that varies by the stock that day. And it’s not because he abused open source, he’s just the greatest huckster of all time.
- qwerpy 10d ago
  The post seems like a poorly disguised political rant “I don’t like the US, I don’t like the rich” with the license change being an excuse to post it to a technical forum.
kzrdude 11d ago
Using EUPL is mostly a way to signal that you want to use a license grounded in EU law, not in US law. That's at least the way I've looked at it.
- throawayonthe 11d ago
  if the EUPL actually closes the SaaS loophole (first time i'm hearing about it though) in a legally grounded way i can see it being used by people outside the EU who say the AGPL is unenforceable/is actually nonfree/is too hard to actually comply with
franciscop 11d ago
> "Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires." I hate that some people like to put us all in the same bag. Please don't include me. I don't really care if either my neighbor or Elon Musk used my open source code. I publish it as such because it's a present to the world at large that I can do, and I believe everyone will benefit with my code being MIT. You're free to have different ideals, but it's silly to claim that my ideals are wrong and that finally "you" realized that my ideals are wrong. I don't even want to have a culture wars, just don't include me in yours please.
- logifail 11d ago
  > I don't really care if either my neighbor or Elon Musk used my open source code. I wish we could spend less (collective) time here on HN talking about/worrying about Elon Musk. We're (allegedly) here for "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". What SpaceX and/or Tesla are doing could certainly satisfy that, worrying about Musk himself certainly isn't.
  - franciscop 11d ago
    Agreed; I mentioned Elon because the post made the reference quite explicit by saying "trillionaires", probably given the context Bezos or Gates would've been better examples though.
    - bergie 10d ago
      Fair point, but "making billionaires multi-billionaires" didn't have quite the same ring to it :-D (I'm the author of that blog post)
- bigstrat2003 11d ago
  Agreed. I don't care if some big tech company uses my work to become even richer, or even if they use my code in some closed software. It doesn't harm me or others, as third parties cannot take away the work I gave to the commons. They may not give to the commons in the way I did, but nobody is any worse off than if the company developed their own software from scratch. So why should I care?
jimnotgym 11d ago
If one licences open source under a strong copyleft licence (say AGPL3) presumably one can open up later and issue under weaker licences (say MIT) if one chooses? Presumably you can also sell access to it with a full commercial licence if one chooses?
- emersion 11d ago
  This works as long as you're the only copyright holder. If other developers contribute, weakening the license requires their approval.
  - fluoridation 11d ago
    It's also possible if contributors agree to waive rights to their contributions, thus having multiple contributors and a single rights holder.
Daegalus 11d ago
https://github.com/daegalus/daegalus/blob/main/licensing-philosophy.md https://github.com/daegalus/daegalus/blob/main/licensing-phi... I created something like this on my github and then i relicensed what i could that was purely mine, and kept other stuff unchanged and only used those licenses as default going forward mostly. I chose EUPL also for pure AGPL style OSS work. and I plan to use other licenses as needed.
bagxrvxpepzn 11d ago
[dead]
1294899 11d ago
The license still allows AI training theft. What is needed is an OSS EULA that forbids IP theft, since the governments are corrupt and still allow it. The EULA needs a clause that 10% of the market cap of a company will be paid to the IP holder upon violating it.
- 9dev 11d ago
  That is a lost cause, because the AI companies are above the law now. Copyright doesn't apply to them, felonies committed by them (via their agents) are not prosecuted, and if the AI bubble were to burst, they would be bailed out because by now, all American pensions and the ETFs of the rest of the world depend on them staying fantastical capital black holes. But what we still can do is stop programming for free for Big Tech, and this license at least gets us closer toward that goal.
- RobotToaster 11d ago
  The current argument AI owners use is that it falls under fair use as "transformative use", so the licence is entirely irrelevant. If that wasn't the case anything trained on GPL code would have to be released under the GPL. I'm now sure what if any argument they are using in Europe. Most countries here have a "fair dealing" exemption which is similar to USA "fair use", but it doesn't include "transformative use". The closest would be "pastiche", but that wouldn't really cover it.
  - rlkamn 11d ago
    EULA != license, which is the entire point.
    - Tomte 11d ago
      Licenses are contracts, just like an EULA. And if you expand the acronym EULA you will actually find that it is… a license agreement.
      - rlkamn 11d ago
deleted 11d ago
[deleted]
pelagicAustral 11d ago
Perfect, I've been looking for a license I can get behind for new projects. I just made a few tweaks https://aeupl.org/ https://aeupl.org/
vernonHeim 11d ago
[flagged]
mistrial9 11d ago
https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/documentation-repository https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/do...
xyzelement 11d ago
When open source was becoming a huge thing for everyone to participate in - say 20ish years ago, I always saw a dichotomy that people seemed to gloss over. You're either writing software for fun and you are happy to give it away. In which case anyone's use of it is to do as they please including make money is just bragging right for you. Or you write software for a living in which case giving it away for free is dumb. You want to charge maximally for your money making output.
knorker 11d ago
> Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. No. YOU changed your mind, to become less free and more authoritarian. > gained little for users What? The world runs on Linux. > or developers. Were you even there before "everything" was open source and/or free software? > our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires. Yeah that was always allowed. The problem with freedom is that people get to make their own choices, eh?
scam-alt-human 11d ago
[flagged]
red_admiral 11d ago
The EUPL sound like a good idea - preserving some of the ideas of the FSF (copyleft) but in a way that governments and companies can actually use to develop their own software. Personally I'm still in the BSD camp, but my current ranking is BSD/MIT > EUPL > (L)GPL now.
lukan 11d ago
"Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires." Did anyone ever claimed, open source was a way to get super rich in money? It was always about access to source, to study, to tinker, to improve upon. We now have huge ressources of open source software to learn from - indeed a win I say. And it is not clear at all to me, that the alternative timeline would have been any better, if FOSS and a strong copyleft would have won as developers choice and standard - I rather would expect it to be way more niche - and trillionaires would be as rich as ever.
Cider9986 11d ago
Best license: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en
- Diti 10d ago
  How is it “the best”? It’s inapplicable in any jurisdiction which guarantees authors cannot give away their moral rights. So literally any other license which requires attribution is better than CC-0 in that case, for instance.
ang_cire 10d ago
"Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires. And so it is time to stop messing about with permissive licenses. If corporations don’t want to use our software under our terms, they are free to spend the effort or tokens to build their own." Funny, my reaction was to just make all my stuff Unlicense instead of MIT.
TheChaplain 10d ago
In all honesty, a license matters little to nothing if there is no enforcement behind it. And enforcement needs pockets deep enough to drive a legal process. A normal person like me? No way, I can't afford the money nor time. I know GPL have some backing of SFC and FSF, but all others like EUPL, MIT, APL and so forth?
AuthAuth 10d ago
Its a nice thought but copyright is dead in the age of AI. I wish it werent but it is. We're in a period where copyright is only enforced selectively and it will pass.
ReactiveJelly 10d ago
"favored by the NPM package ecosystem" Huh. My story is that 15 to 20 years ago, as a young programmer, I read some of Stallman's writings and I was convinced that copyleft was the only way to keep free software free. Copyleft vs permissive seems like a "paradox of intolerance". There's no paradox. You cut down intolerance where you see it. But then I'm a big skeptic and I'm always willing to believe that everyone else could be wrong. Which is not a great heuristic, except when you're actually right.
cherylmichelaki 10d ago
[flagged]

153 points by jllyhill 11d ago

This doesn't say why you didn't choose AGPL. Did you consider it? EUPL isn't compatible with either AGPL or GPL, which seems weird for a new copyleft license

jruohonen 11d ago

CC BY-NC-ND is what I'm also increasingly using (for non-code), though not always, and disheartenedly. (And as commented, the non-code context is different.)

hypfer 11d ago
ND is usually a bit sad, as it makes the thing a dead-end. The magic of the web has always been that things would continuously morph through being reinterpreted and all, and that just doesn't happen with ND. I can of course see the valid reasons why one would pick that license, but it's still.. kinda sad that it's culturally dead.
- jruohonen 11d ago
  True enough; philosophically, I am still in the BY camp (a.k.a. BSD/MIT/etc.), and I do not particularly care about the NC part, but ND is increasingly important for non-code. But if they could do even the BY properly, it would be a step to the right direction (and, to some extent, I think they're doing that).
  - hypfer 11d ago
    Huh. Can you elaborate why you view ND as increasingly important, whereas NC bothers you less? Because for me, it would be the exact other way round.
    - jruohonen 11d ago
      ND is important for those who do "authoritative writing" (for a lack of a better term); i.e., when you write with your real name, you do not want nonsense and disinformation associated with your name.
      - hypfer 11d ago
        Ah, yeah, in the meanwhile I've also googled your nick and saw that you're in academics. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
        ghaff 11d ago
        Yes, I think of it more in the context of photo and video integrity, but you can certainly imagine an unscrupulous individual rewriting something and changing the meaning. Of course, I doubt a license would stop that person.
        roundabout-host 11d ago
        Doesn't CC BY require to say what you changed?
        skeledrew 11d ago
        If a person would ignore one part of a license, they may also ignore other parts.
        yjftsjthsd-h 11d ago
        ... Then why would they care that it's ND?
        ghaff 11d ago
        Not really. You're supposed to attribute the original creator. And if I did make major changes/additions I'd find some way to flag that. But you don't have a Github-style change log.
- ghaff 11d ago
  I discussed NC in my other comment. But, yes, ND is arguably counter the whole remix culture that was supposedly part of the impetus for Creative Commons in the first place. I do kind of see the logic behind prohibiting, say, a remix of a video or photo in a way that misrepresents the subject. But I also don't particularly like it.
ghaff 11d ago
The problem is that not even Creative Commons was able to come up with a real definition for non-commercial when they last (I think) revised the license. Essentially it means trivial uses (a photo in a grade school assignment) or its contentious in a way that reasonable people can disagree about. What constitutes acceptable usage of a properly attributed photo? Personally, I just properly attribute and stopped worry about whether most presentations constituted commercial use or not.
Brian_K_White 11d ago
BY-SA As both a consumer and producer, NC makes it kind of a pointless untouchable dead end even if I never intend to make a business out of something. A lot of unintended things could be argued as commecial and who wants to risk it? If I do something purely as ahobby, and along the way make a youtube video about it, and that video pays money, I suddenly become techically in violation of non-commercial. Or I use it in a class where I was paid to teach. Or any number of ordinary possible uses that along the way do involve an exchange of money. Let alone the freedom to change my mind in 5 years and decide I do want to sell something I made that initially I didn't. I don't know what I might want to do tomorrow, so best to just not invest any of my time or effort into anything that might bite me later. ND is 100x worse. Why even bother publishing a design at all then? Just sell your commercial propeietary product, and any users who want the plans you can just sell them more service for support and customization instead. So I only apply BY-SA to be as similar to classic GPL as possible, and it's no problem at all if there is a business that can't accept the SA terms. It doesn't prevent selling a product, it just prevents being a dick and a thief (well on paper anyway, of course they go ahead and steal anyway but that's a different problem). If I ever had something where I didn't want anyone else to be able to sell it, I just wouldn't publish it at all in the first place.
- ghaff 11d ago
  I wouldn't use an NC photo on a big company stage or in a marketing campaign. But I sort of convinced myself I wasn't being directly paid for most of the presentations that I did and do, so it was OK enough. And I don't materially rework most photos or text.
RobotToaster 11d ago
NC is a huge pain as it can be difficult to define commercial use, and it's often defined differently in different countries. https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC https://www.techdirt.com/2014/03/27/german-court-says-creative-commons-non-commercial-licenses-must-be-purely-personal-use/ https://www.techdirt.com/2014/03/27/german-court-says-creati...
- mark_l_watson 11d ago
  And NC doesn’t always work. I use no commercial reuse (NC) yet years ago a polite young man from China emailed me letting me know that he was translating my stuff to resell under his name for money. To be honest, I didn’t mind and it made a good story to tell friends and family.
  - ghaff 11d ago
    I had something similar happen with a book I wrote through a publisher. I went radio silence on him. Would have required contacting my publisher and I didn't need the hassle.
- ghaff 10d ago
  That's one of the reasons that defining NC broke down in the latest round of CC license revisions. Sure, even in the US, define NC as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. But that doesn't mean some mom-and-pop charity you agree with. It can easily mean a non-profit with goals you totally disagree with. And how about 501(c)(6)s like the NFL? And that's just US tax law.
mark_l_watson 11d ago
I have been releasing books under Creative Commons for 20+ years. Share alike, no modifications, no commercial reuse. I sell my books via Leanpub (my books https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson https://leanpub.com/u/markwatson) and they can all be read free online (recommended to see if you like them), and if purchased the price can be reset to free, zero cost. I like CC because I like my books to be read and I still make money. When people choose to pay I use that as a signal for which topics to put future effort into. My wife has been my editor for ever, so this is a family business. EDIT: over 20 years ago, I was what I think was Larry Lessig’s second ‘Featured Commoner’ and that was fun because they interviewed me and posted the interview in the CC web site.
- sph 10d ago
  I recognize your nickname because I have always enjoyed your comments on Lisp on here, so I checked out the site and disappointingly because of topic and appearance, look like AI slop to me. As there's no publication date listed, and I'm particularly intolerant to slop, can you recommend a book of yours published before Autumn 2022?
  - mark_l_watson 10d ago
    My older books have real photographs on them (e.g., https://leanpub.com/lovinglisp https://leanpub.com/lovinglisp) and newer ones have AI generated covers and some have AI generated figures. Look for books with photos I have taken of nature - those are the old books (exception is Java AI book that is 90% very old material, but has a new AI generated cover). In the last year I have started vibe coding a lot, but I still take personal ownership of my latest code examples because I set requirements and provide a design, and ask AI coding harnesses to let me run and test the code so I tweak it. Anyway, it still feels like mostly my code and I prefer the new AI + Mark code over what I used to produce. This has been a strange ride! I learned to program in 1965 and have always loved coding, but it is a weird new world we live in, my friend.

LoganDark 11d ago

I don't like the phrasing of the EUPL because it says you have rights full stop and then in a later section it says there are actually conditions. For that reason I would not immediately be sure the conditions are even enforceable, other than "this was surely made by lawyers and therefore also surely valid". Aside from that, it is nice to see Communication counted alongside Distribution; this should have been done from the start IMO.

jraph 11d ago
> I don't like the phrasing of the EUPL because it says you have rights full stop and then in a later section it says there are actually conditions. For that reason I would not immediately be sure the conditions are even enforceable. Full right to use no conditions ≠ full right on what you can do with the code
- LoganDark 11d ago
  > Full right to use no conditions ≠ full right on what you can do with the code 2. Scope of the rights granted by the Licence The Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable licence to do the following, for the duration of copyright vested in the Original Work: - use the Work in any circumstance and for all usage, - reproduce the Work, - modify the Work, and make Derivative Works based upon the Work, - communicate to the public, including the right to make available or display the Work or copies thereof to the public and perform publicly, as the case may be, the Work, - distribute the Work or copies thereof, - lend and rent the Work or copies thereof, - sublicense rights in the Work or copies thereof. Those rights can be exercised on any media, supports and formats, whether now known or later invented, as far as the applicable law permits so. In the countries where moral rights apply, the Licensor waives his right to exercise his moral right to the extent allowed by law in order to make effective the licence of the economic rights here above listed. The Licensor grants to the Licensee royalty-free, non-exclusive usage rights to any patents held by the Licensor, to the extent necessary to make use of the rights granted on the Work under this Licence. This is a lot more rights than just to use and there is absolutely nothing about conditions in this entire section. There's not even a hint of conditions until three sections later, in section 5 where it starts modifying section 2, which feels messy to me.

amazingamazing 11d ago

Do these types of things really matter anymore? If you have tokens, given the source is available pretty easy to reimplement with plausible deniability.

Joel_Mckay 11d ago
As much as I dislike isomorphic plagiarism, your point is very valid... It is a viable argument, and people shouldn't bury such insights given the estimated $9Tn worth of opensource work that was appropriated. =3
ChocolateGod 11d ago
I think there's been a mistake in the thinking that restricting the licensing on open source projects will make the companies that use them as a service would make them contribute. They don't, the companies just replace the software in question.
andxor 11d ago
It's a quixotic crusade, in perfect European style.
- janfoeh 11d ago
  Yes, how quixotic of them. They really should have foreseen this when they published the license … checks notes … close to twenty years ago.
KronisLV 11d ago
https://malus.sh/ https://malus.sh/ (I think it was intended to be satire/critique)
deleted 11d ago
[deleted]
lionkor 11d ago
If you think an LLM can just implement e.g. an alternative to the Linux kernel from scratch (or any other GPL licensed software), you might be falling for the marketing. Have you seen LLMs build large, stable, pieces of software, that work well, with your own eyes? I have not. I have seen LLMs build small, well-understood things, and I've seen LLMs do super well with extremely well specified problems, but all the rest seems to be marketing (i.e. I couldn't observe or reproduce it). Edit: I'm not talking about throwaway slop that just needs to run long enough to get funding.

Joel_Mckay 11d ago

For FOSS I personally prefer Apache 2.0 license, as 10 years from now I have no idea what people will need for their projects. Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work. Just don't redirect commercial support tickets onto community projects, or get neglected customers to contact authors. The way I see it... is symbiotic commercial relationships are important, as people can get their time sponsored to work on FOSS code. Also, having community projects form reliable long term infrastructure opens additional opportunity for people to work with FOSS options. Telling people how they should have fun is always lame... whether it is Sony/Microsoft... or just some disillusioned dude convinced their work won't be obfuscated by an LLM in 30 seconds. =3

ricardobeat 11d ago
This, for some reason, has become a controversial idea — as evidenced by your comment being downvoted. I don’t understand what angle people are coming from, when they disregard the community effects of open-source software entirely. If your main goal is to make money, there is absolutely nothing wrong with building a business instead.
- Joel_Mckay 11d ago
  If people have a rational self-interest in helping build great works, than the projects simply manifest out of necessity. There is zero benefit in assuming everything is a zero-sum game. With billions of people online someone is always having the best or worst day of their lives. I rather people be honest about what they think, and trust respectful disagreement is welcome. Have a great day =3
broodbucket 11d ago
>Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work Copyleft doesn't say that they can't, it says they have to make their changes available
- Joel_Mckay 11d ago

dotancohen 11d ago

This article would do better if it simply enumerated the problems with the LGPL and addressed how this new license which I've never heard of addresses those problems. This hinting and alluding might make great SEO, but that's fit for neither the audience of people producing software, nor for HN.

KronisLV 11d ago
Here's the license text if someone wants to do the work: https://spdx.org/licenses/EUPL-1.2.html#licenseText https://spdx.org/licenses/EUPL-1.2.html#licenseText
- LoganDark 11d ago
  This is the actual license text, in English: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/custom-page/attachment/2020-03/EUPL-1.2%20EN.txt https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/file... Other languages can be found here: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/eupl-text-eupl-12 https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/eu...
LoganDark 11d ago
The article seems pretty clear that the LGPL is too weak compared to the EUPL for this author, and one of the main concerns is the "SaaS loophole" which I assume would be addressed by the AGPL but also seems addressed by the EUPL.
- brainwad 11d ago
  But the EUPL itself says that derivative works may be distributed under the LGPL instead, as long as those works are derived from both a EUPL and LGPL parent. This seems kinda trivial to abuse and the author should have noticed this clause if that was their main concern.
  - LoganDark 11d ago
    Huh, that's a pretty massive loophole. Pretty much makes the whole license irrelevant.

mnahkies 11d ago

What are people's thoughts/experiences about dual licencing? Eg: is there a clean way to dual license such that hobbyist, and exploratory work (eg: a proof of concept done in a commercial setting) are allowed, but using it in production requires a fee? If you've done this, has it been successful? Obviously there's been many projects relicense over recent years (terraform, redis, etc) - but it's less clear to me if this is a viable path for new projects starting out, or if it just kills adoption from the beginning.

RobotToaster 11d ago
The usual way I've seen it work is using the AGPL. AGPL doesn't bar use in commercial production, but the requirements usually scare off any corporate from using it in production.
- mark_l_watson 11d ago
  I like the AGPL but don’t often use it. (I did recently license two coding harnesses I wrote as AGPL.) A long time ago, I didn’t mind huge tech companies getting rich partially via open source, now I do. In the USA the collusion between government and big tech is starting to smell a little bit like fascism. Sorry, I have only complaints, not any good answers.
  - ValdikSS 11d ago
    >A long time ago, I didn’t mind huge tech companies getting rich partially via open source, now I do. Is the concern that anybody will be earning money on your software (just that), or that you won't get any money, or that they will earn money and don't give back the code? If the company earns money and opens the code, is that OK for you? Just for you and for everyone information, Richard Stallman himself told people not only to sell their own software, but the software written by others as well! > Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising to you, please read on. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html AGPL, just as all other GPL, does not prohibit selling the software. If you goal is to make your software unsellable, please use your own licensing terms (there's nothing wrong with that!!!)

ricardobeat 11d ago

> We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires. As a long-time developer and consumer of OSS I have to disagree. Open-source software has had an enormous effect on the world, and that... was kind of the point? When we licensed things as MIT we knew that corporations would use it. We wanted them to use them, adopt them and bring new users into the community. You take some, you give back. There was no expectation of turning your late-afternoons JS framework into a business. And not having access to it would absolutely not have stopped corporate behemoths from getting where they are, but would have killed many small businesses and startups. That said, I've started licensing some of my code with the BUSL license [1] - unrestricted use, unless you are a large company. The code becomes MIT-licensed automatically after a set window to remove maintainability concerns. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License

LtWorf 11d ago
But why should I work for free so that companies can fire my fellow human beings?
- deleted 11d ago
  [deleted]
- brainwad 11d ago
  The causality is wrong here. You chose to work for free with no reward, and _then_ companies found your work and used it. Presumably you started out working for free because it was intrinsically rewarding (otherwise: stop doing work you hate for free?).
  - LtWorf 11d ago
    I chose to do it for free to help other people. And picking a MIT license does the opposite.

BlackRabbit1 11d ago

For hardware/electronics I also recommend looking at the CERN OHL licenses. They cover a very specific niche GPL/AGPL/etc. do not cover properly.

charcircuit 11d ago

>All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires. This is not true. Open source is fundamental to how easy users can create software in the LLM era. Users and developers have gained tremendous value. Saying they have gained little is simply false. And it's a good thing to make it possible for big corporations to make things cheaper. It means more efficient resource allocation for society. And for billionaires to turn into trillionaire they have to provide magnitudes more value to society in order to do so. Enabling people to provide trillions of dollars of value to society is a good thing that open source unlocks.

kypro 11d ago
Also theres not multiple trillionaires in the world, and the one trillionaire we have did that largely by innovating and creating new stuff rather than just leveraging existing OSS for profit...
zelphirkalt 11d ago
Rather feels like post LLMs being everywhere, salary levels for developers are dropping left and right. Where did we gain value?

apt-get 11d ago

Worth noting that the "escape hatch" clauses in the EUPL that allow converting it into other licenses mean it's only ever as strong as the weakest license it names for such an operation, AKA EPL/MPL/LGPL. Any actor that wants to mess around with providing a closed extension on a network service can exercise that option with an EUPL codebase, so if you care about that, you're better off explicitly naming the AGPL or whatnot. EUPL is built for government agencies first, and most of the focus is ensuring that nobody has to worry about mix-and-matching it with other copyleft licenses, plus legal language that covers and harmonizes variations in notions of copyright/patents/intellectual property across EU countries, not so much waging war against hyperscalers. (But it's still great to have around!)

throwaway89201 11d ago
You are describing the compatibility clause as if it's settled that the EUPL simply allows you to convert to a compatible license. The compatibility clause is an unfortunate ambiguity, but it's not the intention of the license authors to lose strong copyleft and SaaS loophole protections this way. See for example here [1] [2] [3]. [1] https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/discussion/ultimately-how-copyleft-eupl https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/di... [2] https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/how-use-eupl https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/ho... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45422512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45422512
- Luker88 11d ago
  The way I read all of that is that: * BigTech can take your EUPL library and write a small wrapper in MPL * such a wrapper can therefore be used in any project, even a closed one that is a network service. * however all of that still qualifies as distributing EUPL, and the EUPL core would still need to be made available under EUPL (whether modified or not). Saying that since I have an MPL wrapper then all the code is MPL is not allowed. So you can't just copy all the code and change the license to MPL. This is basically AGPL without virality and anti-tivo, correct?

alturp 11d ago

codemog 11d ago
Also there’s only one trillionaire and that varies by the stock that day. And it’s not because he abused open source, he’s just the greatest huckster of all time.
qwerpy 10d ago
The post seems like a poorly disguised political rant “I don’t like the US, I don’t like the rich” with the license change being an excuse to post it to a technical forum.

kzrdude 11d ago

Using EUPL is mostly a way to signal that you want to use a license grounded in EU law, not in US law. That's at least the way I've looked at it.

throawayonthe 11d ago
if the EUPL actually closes the SaaS loophole (first time i'm hearing about it though) in a legally grounded way i can see it being used by people outside the EU who say the AGPL is unenforceable/is actually nonfree/is too hard to actually comply with

franciscop 11d ago

> "Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires." I hate that some people like to put us all in the same bag. Please don't include me. I don't really care if either my neighbor or Elon Musk used my open source code. I publish it as such because it's a present to the world at large that I can do, and I believe everyone will benefit with my code being MIT. You're free to have different ideals, but it's silly to claim that my ideals are wrong and that finally "you" realized that my ideals are wrong. I don't even want to have a culture wars, just don't include me in yours please.

logifail 11d ago
> I don't really care if either my neighbor or Elon Musk used my open source code. I wish we could spend less (collective) time here on HN talking about/worrying about Elon Musk. We're (allegedly) here for "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". What SpaceX and/or Tesla are doing could certainly satisfy that, worrying about Musk himself certainly isn't.
- franciscop 11d ago
  Agreed; I mentioned Elon because the post made the reference quite explicit by saying "trillionaires", probably given the context Bezos or Gates would've been better examples though.
  - bergie 10d ago
    Fair point, but "making billionaires multi-billionaires" didn't have quite the same ring to it :-D (I'm the author of that blog post)
bigstrat2003 11d ago
Agreed. I don't care if some big tech company uses my work to become even richer, or even if they use my code in some closed software. It doesn't harm me or others, as third parties cannot take away the work I gave to the commons. They may not give to the commons in the way I did, but nobody is any worse off than if the company developed their own software from scratch. So why should I care?

jimnotgym 11d ago

If one licences open source under a strong copyleft licence (say AGPL3) presumably one can open up later and issue under weaker licences (say MIT) if one chooses? Presumably you can also sell access to it with a full commercial licence if one chooses?

emersion 11d ago
This works as long as you're the only copyright holder. If other developers contribute, weakening the license requires their approval.
- fluoridation 11d ago
  It's also possible if contributors agree to waive rights to their contributions, thus having multiple contributors and a single rights holder.

Daegalus 11d ago

https://github.com/daegalus/daegalus/blob/main/licensing-philosophy.md https://github.com/daegalus/daegalus/blob/main/licensing-phi... I created something like this on my github and then i relicensed what i could that was purely mine, and kept other stuff unchanged and only used those licenses as default going forward mostly. I chose EUPL also for pure AGPL style OSS work. and I plan to use other licenses as needed.

bagxrvxpepzn 11d ago

[dead]

1294899 11d ago

The license still allows AI training theft. What is needed is an OSS EULA that forbids IP theft, since the governments are corrupt and still allow it. The EULA needs a clause that 10% of the market cap of a company will be paid to the IP holder upon violating it.

9dev 11d ago
That is a lost cause, because the AI companies are above the law now. Copyright doesn't apply to them, felonies committed by them (via their agents) are not prosecuted, and if the AI bubble were to burst, they would be bailed out because by now, all American pensions and the ETFs of the rest of the world depend on them staying fantastical capital black holes. But what we still can do is stop programming for free for Big Tech, and this license at least gets us closer toward that goal.
RobotToaster 11d ago
The current argument AI owners use is that it falls under fair use as "transformative use", so the licence is entirely irrelevant. If that wasn't the case anything trained on GPL code would have to be released under the GPL. I'm now sure what if any argument they are using in Europe. Most countries here have a "fair dealing" exemption which is similar to USA "fair use", but it doesn't include "transformative use". The closest would be "pastiche", but that wouldn't really cover it.
- rlkamn 11d ago
  EULA != license, which is the entire point.
  - Tomte 11d ago
    Licenses are contracts, just like an EULA. And if you expand the acronym EULA you will actually find that it is… a license agreement.
    - rlkamn 11d ago

deleted 11d ago

[deleted]

pelagicAustral 11d ago

Perfect, I've been looking for a license I can get behind for new projects. I just made a few tweaks https://aeupl.org/ https://aeupl.org/

vernonHeim 11d ago

[flagged]

mistrial9 11d ago

https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/documentation-repository https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/do...

xyzelement 11d ago

When open source was becoming a huge thing for everyone to participate in - say 20ish years ago, I always saw a dichotomy that people seemed to gloss over. You're either writing software for fun and you are happy to give it away. In which case anyone's use of it is to do as they please including make money is just bragging right for you. Or you write software for a living in which case giving it away for free is dumb. You want to charge maximally for your money making output.

knorker 11d ago

> Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. No. YOU changed your mind, to become less free and more authoritarian. > gained little for users What? The world runs on Linux. > or developers. Were you even there before "everything" was open source and/or free software? > our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires. Yeah that was always allowed. The problem with freedom is that people get to make their own choices, eh?

scam-alt-human 11d ago

[flagged]

red_admiral 11d ago

The EUPL sound like a good idea - preserving some of the ideas of the FSF (copyleft) but in a way that governments and companies can actually use to develop their own software. Personally I'm still in the BSD camp, but my current ranking is BSD/MIT > EUPL > (L)GPL now.

lukan 11d ago

"Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires." Did anyone ever claimed, open source was a way to get super rich in money? It was always about access to source, to study, to tinker, to improve upon. We now have huge ressources of open source software to learn from - indeed a win I say. And it is not clear at all to me, that the alternative timeline would have been any better, if FOSS and a strong copyleft would have won as developers choice and standard - I rather would expect it to be way more niche - and trillionaires would be as rich as ever.

Cider9986 11d ago

Best license: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

Diti 10d ago
How is it “the best”? It’s inapplicable in any jurisdiction which guarantees authors cannot give away their moral rights. So literally any other license which requires attribution is better than CC-0 in that case, for instance.

ang_cire 10d ago

"Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires. And so it is time to stop messing about with permissive licenses. If corporations don’t want to use our software under our terms, they are free to spend the effort or tokens to build their own." Funny, my reaction was to just make all my stuff Unlicense instead of MIT.

TheChaplain 10d ago

In all honesty, a license matters little to nothing if there is no enforcement behind it. And enforcement needs pockets deep enough to drive a legal process. A normal person like me? No way, I can't afford the money nor time. I know GPL have some backing of SFC and FSF, but all others like EUPL, MIT, APL and so forth?

AuthAuth 10d ago

Its a nice thought but copyright is dead in the age of AI. I wish it werent but it is. We're in a period where copyright is only enforced selectively and it will pass.

ReactiveJelly 10d ago

"favored by the NPM package ecosystem" Huh. My story is that 15 to 20 years ago, as a young programmer, I read some of Stallman's writings and I was convinced that copyleft was the only way to keep free software free. Copyleft vs permissive seems like a "paradox of intolerance". There's no paradox. You cut down intolerance where you see it. But then I'm a big skeptic and I'm always willing to believe that everyone else could be wrong. Which is not a great heuristic, except when you're actually right.

cherylmichelaki 10d ago

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