Re: The sad decline of copyleft software licenses? :(

[Marinus Savoritias]

On 9/22/20 8:39 PM, Pedro Lucas Porcellis wrote:
> > The second criticism is kind of a sign of the times if you think about it.
> > 30 years ago when GPL there was the big war of us versus them. And evil
> > corporations and all of that stuff. Not that these dangerous corporations
> > don't exist now of course. The danger of corporations is more than ever. But
> > the people have changed.
>
> I don't think those people have changed. They just adapted to the
> current environment. By marketing "open-source" libraries and components
> you can have cheap and free labor. "Don't worry, people will fix that
> React bug for you, while you don't really respect people's freedoms,
> keep spying, storing user's data, doing unethical things, and even
> fucking up things outside the non-digital world, I mean, look at
> facebook and Google, etc.

I was talking about the developers. The companies of course haven't 
changed. The backend has become more free software though among other 
stuff. Not copyleft though.

> > People nowadays are far more collaborative and diverse. The simple number of
> > programmers and licenses and software that we have is hundreds of time more
> > than 30 years ago. Expecting people to stay only in the GPL ecosystem, which
> > is not that big to begin with, is basically driving people away. I can't
> > think of a single programmer that I can convince to use GPL with all of the
> > legalities and considerations of dependencies it can have.
>
> Again, that's just a lack of understanding and lazyness of today most
> developers. If a developer randomly picks a permissive license this
> person can trade that for GPL. The key difference is that all
> derivative-works will keep enforcing that premisse while building a
> chain of respect.

I guess it depends how you look at it. For me its a lack of outreach and 
connection from FSF and GNU to the rest of the developer community.

> > One big success story of Copyleft license is the Activity Pub ecosystem if
> > you know it. Mastodon, Pixelfed, Peertube, WriteFreely and more all under
> > AGPL-3.
> >
> > The thing we have to keep in mind with Copyleft is that it is still not the
> > time for it in my opinion. We live in a time of extreme corporate
> > propaganda. And fake openness everywhere. While at the same time they lock
> > into their ecosystem. Two big examples is the Web with the Google-Chromium
> > monopoly and systemd.
>
> That's EXACTLY why we need Copyleft. We need to push forward and show
> that companies and products can be built around licenses like the GPL.
> For instance, sourcehut (AGPL) is one of the most promising examples of
> a company built around a complete free and open-source ecosystem, and
> which truly enforces and contributes more and more towards this goal.

Agreed. it would be a good idea to show that GPL can be profitable.
Personally I don't really care about companies that much though.

> > 1. Is FSF and GNU as a whole happy with the current situation? We
> > technically have more Free Software than ever. But the Copyleft and user
> > abuse is as high as it has ever been.
> >
> > 2. Is FSF and GNU the center of thing anymore? Do we want it to be? Because
> > I can tell you that there are Copyleft Licenses outside of GNU. Few but
> > exist. And there are developers that left GNU for some reason but still work
> > on Copyleft software. And of course the young developers that haven't heard
> > of FSF or GNU. Or don't want/bother to join.
>
> I think this is about perspective. FSF and GNU still _works_. They're
> being undermined because we live in a society where we enforce _non free
> software_ and make it even harder for people who wants to write free
> software, after all, _in order to write free software we need to write
> proprietary software first as we need to pay some bills_.
>
> I think this is all deeply related to how we structure ourself as
> society and depoliticization of the free software movement.
>
> I hope it made sense, I wrote in a bit of a hurry while writing
> proprietary software for companies that literally throw thousands of
> pesticides in my country's food.

I think its also because FSF and GNU have a trouble of being relevant. 
They are not known so much among devs and if they are they don't like 
them or they don't care. I think its a lack of outreach as I said above.

What do you mean depoliticization?

Marinus Savoritias