linuxmemes

I'm an idiot making a thing, and I need to pick a license. Where's a good place to talk to people more knowledgeable than myself on the subject?

EDIT: so my thing isn't software, i probably should have mentioned that. I am making a ruleset and setting for something similar to but not exactly a tabletop rpg. The ORC license sounds promising, but the legalese makes my brain gray out. ChatGPT tells me to use a version of the Creative Commons license, but ChatGPT isn't exactly reliable.

Permissive License promoters are corporate trolls

Someone please SUE ANYCUBIC AND CREALITY FOR STEALING KLIPPER !!!!!!! Make them give back to the community that created their business !!

Interestingly enough, Tanenbaum doesn’t seem to mind what intel did.

Yeah, duh. Intelligent people read licenses before they pick one.

But there are some examples out there of people regretting releasing their work under a permissive license.

That's like signing a contract before reading it and then complaining that it contains provisions that surprise you when they are enacted. I'm baffled on a regular basis by how many people understand FOSS licenses only on the basis for hearsay, for example when people insist that GPLed source code must be made available free of charge for everyone. The GNU project has a FAQ about the GPL that spells it out that this is not the case and yet hardly anyone discussing FOSS licenses has even read the FAQ.

Permissive licenses are truer to the spirit of free software but copyleft, while kind of a copout, seems more pragmatic due to corporations. I wouldn't avoid copyleft licensing on principle or anything but it feels incongruous to want to make something freely available to all but then nitpick over how they use it.

Busybox was quickly replaced by BSD-licensed Toybox everywhere for that exact reason.

Copyleft licenses (like the Gnu General Public License) mandate that all derivative works remain free.

This is false. It's perfectly legal to take GPL-licensed work, modify it, and sell it. As long as the work itself does not reach the general public, you don't need to release it's source code to the public (e.g. your work for the military, you take money for your work, and provide source code to them, but not release it publicly).

My project is MIT because the upstream project is MIT, could I slap a GPL on there? How would I do that? What would that change?

Really?...

Just about every FOSS and Source-Available license that I've seen is perfectly valid. As a software developer, one has the option to choose how they wish to license their software. This can be based upon one's personal philosophical view or what seems most appropriate for the piece of software.

Not everyone is motivated by profit. Most software that I develop personally is permissively licensed because IDGAF as long as I have enough to get by. If I write some code that makes someone else's life better or easier, that's more than enough for me.

Wait. What am I saying? This is the Internet and, according to the rules of corpo social media, we're all supposed to be dicks to each other to further "engagement". WHICH ONE OF YOU SAVAGES IS USING TAB INDENTATION INSTEAD OF BLOCKS IN YOUR LICENSE FILES?!?;?!!!!111one

We are at risk

of losing many developers who would otherwise choose a license like the GPL. Fortunately, I'm glad to be surrounded by people, just like you, who care about licenses like GPL. By uploading this type of content and engaging with it, be show our commitment to it. I wish to suggest how we can deal with this threat.

We will lose developers who choose GPL if we use words that suggest GPL is "restrictive". Sure, the word "restrictive" was avoided in this meme by using the word "copyleft", but the cognitive jump from "permissive" to "restrictive" is minimal: just add an "opposite" and you've got "permissive is the opposite to restrictive". It really is that simple. That's how brain works (check out Relational Frame Theory to see how that works).

So what can we do about it?

Well, we can approach this with science. There is a historical global trend towards people being more meta-cognitive. That means that people are becoming more aware of how our thoughts interpret everyday reality and how to be intentional with our relationship with our thoughts so that we live better lives. We know this trend is happening to virtually everyone everywhere because of the work of brilliant sociologists like Anthony Giddens and Christian Welzel. Heck, even the history of psychology —going from noticing and changing behaviors (behaviorism) to noticing and changing behaviors and thoughts (cognitive-behaviorism), to noticing and changing the context and function of behaviors, thoughts, and emotions (functional contextualism)— reflects this trend.

We can use meta-cognition in our favor; we can use the meta-cognitive tool of framing to change how we think about GPL and MIT licenses. Effective communicators like influencers, political campaign experts, and influential activists use framing all the time. For example, instead of using the dangerous framing that suggests GPL is 'restrictive', we can use another one that truly displays the virtues of the license.

What would this other frame look like? I may not have a perfect answer, but here are some

ways of framing (thinking about) the relationship between licenses like GPL and MIT:

(ironically!!!, these were 'suggested' by an LLM; I wonder if these frames already existed)

• "Investment-Protecting Licenses" vs. "Investment-Risking Licenses" (as in developers invest by working on projects that they could (not) lose the ability to contribute to)
• "Community-Resource-Guarding Licenses" vs. "Exploitation-Vulnerable Licenses"
• "Give-and-Take Licenses" vs. "Take-and-Keep Licenses" ⭐
• "Freedom-Ensuring Licenses" vs. "Freedom-Risking Licenses" ⭐
• "Contribution-Rewarding Licenses" vs. "Contribution-Exploiting Licenses"
• "Open-Source-Preserving Licenses" vs. "Closed-Source-Enabling Licenses"

I'd be happy to hear what you think, including suggestions!