MIT is good enough for me, and brief enough for a layman to understand. What made the difference between BSD and Linux was the USL v. BSDi lawsuit caused by BSD initially being based on code under the AT&T license. So I wouldn't say the permissive BSD license has anything to do with that.

I dislike the GPLv3 for overstepping its reach from software to hardware stipulations. It essentially makes software unusable for embedded devices that are too small to have an interface with which you can modify it.

Unless you're writing something of enough quality or popularity that you think it's going to be used by bigco, it's probably not an issue worth giving any thought. Even just dumping source without an attached license works, since only nitpickers and people commercializing things will care about making sure all the t's are dotted with regard to licensing.

If you want to give up all rights in principle while philosophically discouraging bigco from using it, wtfpl license will work because they don't actually recognize those so are scared of using it. Also since it's tat it would be remiss not to mention the plusnigger license which is fun.

>C) ensure, that your code isn't stolen by big corporations without credit.
The GPL may help prevent this, but the Four Essential Freedoms aren't relevant to this.

>I prefer the CC0, because I don't want to impose artificial restriction on other people.
The FSF recommends against using this for software.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html

If you want to release your non-software work to the public domain, we recommend you use CC0. For works of software it is not recommended, as CC0 has a term expressly stating it does not grant you any patent licenses.

The relevant term:

No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.

>I don't see how you lose freedom, when you have only a binary. Of course it's better, when the source code is available, but I don't think there is any harm done, as long you can do with it whatever you want.
It makes it much more inconvenient and difficult to study how it works and to modify it to do what you want it to do (freedom 1). It needlessly wastes users' time, hindering users from doing A and B that you mentioned above. That is harmful.

>ISC/Clause-2 BSD/MIT still impose artificial restriction, that are, in my opinion, needless and hence harmful.
Then you could try the 0BSD (actually modified ISC) or MIT-0 licenses, which remove these artificial restrictions and are also considered to be public-domain-equivalent. You can also release your works under multiple licenses so that users can choose whichever one works for them.

>>1802
If you distribute only a binary then the question of software license is moot. (There's EULAs but I don't think those are enforceable anyhow).

Even the most restrictive open-source license is better than a binary for a user though, because at least if the source is available the user can always read through it to understand how it works and reimplement things themselves. Or they can use the knowledge of the source to make binary patches.

What annoys me is when companies want to use the label of open-source but don't actually release any meaningful source. They'll call this "limited open source" or "open core" but really they keep all the interesting parts hidden and just open-source something useless like the GUI portion. If you want to keep things proprietary to avoid competition that's fine, but at least be honest about it.

Although I must say that I hate GPL on principle because those who defend it tend be cult-like fsf members. The idea of GPL resulting in source being made available is good in spirit, but for some reason it always ends with catching people on trivialities that don't matter much. See e.g. the recent Winamp open-source controversy [1]. The source is already made available, and yet that's not enough for some people; just because some of trivial modifications to #define constants or stripping of license (which may have even just been automated and unintentional considering how old the codebase is), they want to nail the devs to the wall.

[1] https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/issues/265

>>1807
And they've deleted it. Nice going fossheads

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/winamp-really-whips-open-source-coders-into-frenzy-with-its-source-release/

>>1810
>Nice going fossheads
I don't blame them for this. It's another case of corporate idiocy and decrepit management. And Winamp was in the legal wrong by including stuff that's not open source. From both a legalistic and lassiz faire perspective, they fucked up. The ACTUAL devs are most in pain, because of the idiocy of suits.

From the first comment:
>I worked at Winamp till this February. I was the one that suggested the we'd open-source all the player code that belonged to us
>I envisioned something à la DOOM GPL release
>that proposal was repeatedly ignored by management which couldn't be convinced that this decades-old spaghetti code had nothing more than historical value
>"Why would we give our IP away ?! We paid for that". As if VLC, Foobar2000, etc didn't exist ...
>After our NFT adventures (barf), the Winamp "brand" took a hit with enthusiasts, so maybe releasing the code would give us some positive attention for once?
>The 4 legacy player dev's got fired before we could clean-up the code for publication. I left soon after.
>I was surprised when they announced the code release.
>No one audited the code, no legal review, the licence is probably AI-generated ... No one took the time to do this right. I'm so dissapointed :(

Post edited on 17th Oct 2024, 7:24am

>>1810
Self-righteous faggots strike again.

>>1811
Sure, like I said they are technically in the wrong. But practically does it matter? It is historical software, and despite the fact that no one bothered noticing these violations for several decades now they start a witch-hunt over its dead corpse. What do they expect to gain out of that, extracting a settlement from a dead company?

The only practical effect of their actions is that now no company is going to bother open sourcing stuff that might have skeletons in the closet, no matter how historical or important it might be. It perfectly embodies the smug lawyer fine-print attitude of the ardent "free software movement" folks, sometimes unable to see the forest for the trees.

>>1813
>But practically does it matter? It is historical software
They thought it mattered enough to cook up their own idiotic license which prohibits making forks. They'd probably cease and desist anyone with a popular fork. If they viewed it as historical software, none of this would have been a problem.

>now no company is going to bother open sourcing stuff that might have skeletons in the closet, no matter how historical or important it might be
Maybe companies should stop being lazy, greedy and retarded. Don't fire people who are capable of reviewing code before releasing it to the public. This whole thing was a pr stunt and way to get volunteers to work for free.

Post edited on 21st Oct 2024, 6:13am

Some other thing I wonder about, is whether in theory it would make even sense to use legal documents such as a licenses, if you are publishing your software under a pseudonym only. Assuming the license wouldn't be valid due to one using a pseudonym, it would be probably futile to even add a license to your code. In practice of course, nobody thinks about that, nobody (or at least myself) would go to court, because of that anyway, and therefor it seems to me the license stuff, when it comes to pseudonyms, is more or less an imaginary protocol, that everybody abides, but is not really enforced in places where somebody doesn't. This of course, is just an educated guess of mine and I'm no lawyer, but it makes sense to me, that a legal document is not valid, if signed with a pseudonym or anonymously.