Context:

Permissive licenses (commonly referred to as “cuck licenses”) like the MIT license allow others to modify your software and release it under an unfree license. Copyleft licenses (like the Gnu General Public License) mandate that all derivative works remain free.

Andrew Tanenbaum developed MINIX, a modular operating system kernel. Intel went ahead and used it to build Management Engine, arguably one of the most widespread and invasive pieces of malware in the world, without even as much as telling him. There’s nothing Tanenbaum could do, since the MIT license allows this.

Erik Andersen is one of the developers of Busybox, a minimal implementation of that’s suited for embedded systems. Many companies tried to steal his code and distribute it with their unfree products, but since it’s protected under the GPL, Busybox developers were able to sue them and gain some money in the process.

Interestingly enough, Tanenbaum doesn’t seem to mind what intel did. But there are some examples out there of people regretting releasing their work under a permissive license.

  • uis@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Temporarily free gives the idea that the code will stop being free at some point

    Because it absolutely can and most of the times does.

    • nossaquesapao
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      5 months ago

      The original code never stops being free, but the code incorporated into a new project will be, so it’s a misleading term to people unfamiliar with open source licensing, that may think the license somehow expires. Even the fsf doesn’t use such terminology. They use reciprocal and nonreciprocal, because it translates the idea that gpl-like licenses create a relationship of reciprocity, and bsd-like ones create a relationship of non reciprocity.