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NiceMicro

the latest conversation of @BrodieOnLinux and the guy on the podcast was quite interesting.

What I found strange is how they separate licenses by being or . AFAIK, most popular licenses like GPL, MIT, BSD, MPL, etc. conform to both the and the standards. I guess what they meant was vs permissive licenses?

@BrodieOnLinux in any event, the conversation about licenses for small developers is very important. Yes, more "people" (corporations) might use your code if you permissively license it, but that makes it so others can use you as free labor to then exploit their users by changing their derivatives / redistributed versions non-free, proprietary software.

If you use licenses, others can use your free labor, but have to keep the work in perpetuity.

@BrodieOnLinux and when it comes to the dedication of to make writing software profitable and sustainable with their new, half-free, half-non-free half-commercial licenses, well good luck to them.

For the devs, a friendly reminder: you don't have to make your work available for everyone in the open. You are allowed to put your work behind a paywall, and to restrict your clients getting updates a la RedHat.

@BrodieOnLinux I would especially like to appeal to friends: license your game under the , and you are still allowed to license the assets under a "proprietary", no redistribution license, so the code guarantees the computing freedom of the users, while the artwork gets all the copyright protection you'd want.

@nicemicro
And why do people say "free and open source software"? If it's free (libre) then it's implicitly also open source.

they meant they fell for propaganda

BTW, even copyleft is permissive. all it does is grant permissions, though well-delimited ones. it's copyright that does the prohibiting. "lax permissive" or "pushover" are better qualifiers for non-copyleft licenses

@lxo I guess it depends on the point of view.

I use "permissive" for MIT and BSD licenses, because they are not restricting developers. Free software is freedom for the users, not the developers. "Permissive" means that the developers are permitted to take away the right of their users by locking down a derivative or redistributed work that was originally free software.

Like, how a "Permissive" regulation might let you cause damage to others without consequence.

free software is freedom for users and developers. controlling others is not freedom, though, it's power. what copyleft refrains from granting middlemen is power over downstream users an developers, so that nobody's freedoms are harmed.

@lxo very interesting point of view, thank you!