I hope we eventually get a copyleft lisence that states: "by using this product in a comercial product you have commited to supporting it, either by monetary fee or doing development work for it behalf, otherwise this product is entirely free of cost and is provided as-is".

Edit: and the developers can freely reproduce the GPL license exception for all their products:

// Under Section 7 of GPL version 3, you are granted additional
// permissions described in the GCC Runtime Library Exception, version
// 3.1, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

Currently, and I don't know why, this extremely useful license exception for (C++) headers, which is meant for compiled down to machine-code is not usable for anything else. If your library is not part of GCC, the GPL does not help you here. As such, if you publish a header only library under GPL, you cannot state that the code using your code is not under "API" boundary, ie. free of GPL, while keeping your precious header under GPL. And no, LGPL, does not save you here.

You only have non-copyleft lisences like MIT (disgusting), Apache (shitly less gross), BSL-1.0 (still non copyleft) or LGPL (not gross, but extremely limiting.)

And, if you still publish something, I plead it is at least under GPL, since this guarantees a life for the produce, non-negotioable, forever, which I think is still better than dying and giving up to pooh of public domain.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 9 points 1 day ago

I want to see this done in governments. Tax the corporations, fund FOSS.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There is a "Commons Clause" that people can add but there is some controversy as to whether adding this clause is enforceable. It very much would violate the strict definition of "FOSS".

That said, I very much am against corporations that make full use of FOSS without contributing anything meaningful in return. I personally believe companies that make over $1M in revenue should absolutely donate something to the FOSS products they use.

Not only that but developers need to stop using permissive licenses like MIT or CC0. Moving to something like GPL3 (and specifically version 3) would go a long way for companies to stop treating open source as a well they can exploit.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 3 points 1 day ago

They use those licences because more than anything else they want their product used

[–] punchmesan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

Discussion I've seen on the subject on Hacker News tends to veer towards MIT being the only license allowed for use in many orgs (with exceptions of course) because license compliance is hard to manage when you're using a lot of open source and you're a small org. So many developers release their code with MIT licenses so it gets used more and looks better on the portfolio.

While I can see their perspective I personally agree with your take and would love to see more GPLv3 adoption and fewer stupidly permissive licenses. There's tooling out there to help with the license compliance challenges, if enough developers moved away from MIT licenses then companies will be forced to deal with it.

[–] tatterdemalion@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago

You can just dual-license as AGPL and a separate commercial license that you negotiate on a case-by-case basis.

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I don’t think believe using GPL will achieve anything. I am a professional developer. If I’m looking for a library for a problem and find one that’s GPL, then I will simply not consider using it. What are the options here?

I could search for a different library with an MIT license. Let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that there are none.

I could ask my boss if I can release all our source code to the public. Yeah, sure. That’s going to happen.

I could ask my boss if I can have a bit of budget to haggle out a license with the library author. That’s a waste of time and money. Hammering out a license agreement across language boundaries and jurisdictions will involve a lot of lawyering and waiting that’s just not worth it. The additional fees would likely even outweigh the agreed payment to the author.

So what’s left? I don’t use a library and program the thing myself. It might take a while, but I’m way cheaper than lawyers. So in the end, GPL won’t do a thing to force a business to support FOSS, but will annoy developers.

That’s why, if I ever am in a position to meaningfully add to FOSS, it will be under the MIT license.

[–] slappyfuck@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It sounds more like you think you are entitled to have access to a library to begin with. Why should one exist that you can exploit in a way that your business wants rather than one that respects freedom—this is where I completely agree with the software freedom folks.

If you work for a private business that is earning profit, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to pay for a library or build it yourself. Why should something else just exist for your business to exploit?

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 1 points 13 hours ago

It sounds more like you think you are entitled to have access to a library to begin with.

Could you point me to the part of my comment that led you to that conclusion?

[–] Miaou@jlai.lu 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

You're being obtuse. Obviously the point above is about the difficulty to actually include GPL libraries in your codebase, not the fact that the company is unwilling to give money. Ever looked at a node_modules folder?

[–] slappyfuck@lemmy.ca 1 points 19 hours ago

That’s funny that you accused me of being obtuse and then immediately did so. Do you not understand what the “difficulty” of including GPL libraries means? Re-read their comment.

I’m not talking about an unwillingness to “give” money here. They’re treating a gratis library existing for them to include in the codebase as a foregone conclusion.

[–] jfrnz@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My favorite option: use the GPL licensed solution to wow your boss by getting the project done fast. Then, the company either gets sued, thereby financially contributing to the project, or you are asked to replace it with your own implementation, giving you job security.

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Or… don’t work at a workplace so toxic that you need to pull these shenanigans.

[–] jfrnz@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Eh, it’s not really so different from the situation you described. I want to support FOSS in my work, but the chances of moving the needle on donations or contributions is slim to none.