I ask this because I think of the recent switch of Ubuntu to the Rust recode of the GNU core utils, which use an MIT license. There are many Rust recodes of GPL software that re-license it as a pushover MIT or Apache licenses. I worry these relicensing efforts this will significantly harm the FOSS ecosystem. Is this reason to start worrying or is it not that bad?

IMO, if the FOSS world makes something public, with extensive liberties, then the only thing that should be asked in return is that people preserve these liberties, like the GPL successfully enforces. These pushover licenses preserve nothing.

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
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    4 hours ago

    Most Open Source software is written by corporations. The Open Source licenses are an advantage to them.

    The biggest source of GPL software is probably Red Hat (IBM). They maintain most of what people think of when they think of GNU software and they wrote many of the newer GPL projects that everybody uses (like systemd).

    The trend has been towards permissive licenses for a long time. The have led to more Open Source software, not less.

    Look at Clang vs GCC. Clang attracts a greater diversity of corporate contribution and generates greater Open Source diversity. Zig and Rust appeared on LLVM for a reason.

    What we should be worried about is the cloud. It allows big companies to outsell the little companies writing Open Source software. Neither permissive nor copyleft licenses prevent this.