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Comment by vezzy-fnord | Hacker News Reader

Works for Neo4j, MongoDB, ownCloud and some others.

Freedom ain't free. There is a price you have to pay. That price is to pass on the same freedoms to others, the freedoms which you explicitly benefited from in your use of the software. To me that sounds like an exceptionally reasonable requirement, but evidently the one not being a grubby freeloader is somehow entitled in your worldview. Interesting how that works.

This reflects the fundamental schism between free software and open source, at least philosophically rather than in terms of what licenses fall under their definitions. Free software implies an ethical responsibility to give back to the community, open source is a way to conveniently reappropriate other people's labor with no obligation to contribute, while hiding behind the cloak of "technical superiority" and "code quality" (which is bullshit).

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> Works for Neo4j, MongoDB, ownCloud and some others.

None of these are abandonware. All three are VC-backed companies. An AGPLv3 license is extremely restrictive for what amounts to a code dump.

Maybe they borrowed code from other AGPLv3 projects?

Well, we agree that there's a philosophical difference.

In my world view, there's nothing ethical about laying claim to all future work output of my own in exchange for incorporating any amount of copyleft code.

This situation favors the original author in the extreme, which is why it's not surprising to see that this works for maintained projects owned by a single author/organization, such as Neo4j, MongoDB, ownCloud, "and some others".

However, the answer for people other than the original author is, unsurprisingly, to generally avoid copyleft code.

The proof is in the pudding; the majority of usable successful projects are licensed in a way that grant the author(s) the ability to benefit from their work outside the straightjacket confines of copyleft.

Well, no, that's a mischaracterization. The provisions are only triggered when redistributing it, and further many GPL projects have linking exceptions, assuming the LGPL isn't used outright. AGPL is stricter because the semantics of networked services are different from local software.

It actually doesn't favor the original author that much. Permissive licensing is more adapt at massive propagation, hence why it's preferred for some low-level or utility libraries like zlib where you would rather not have those be poorly reinvented.

Ignoring the stupidity of defining copyleft as a "straitjacket" when it's clearly beneficial for continuing free terms, most of the popular free software is in fact copyleft, be it GPL, LGPL or MPL. FileZilla, GIMP, Notepad++, Blender, VLC, Wordpress, etc. Then for development, the GNU system is all copyleft and ubiquitous, just to list the most obvious example.

The "you have to distribute it" argument doesn't matter. When your company IP is subject to onerous restrictions as soon as you have to "distribute it", you've greatly reduced the value of that work, now and into the future.

It's notable that your popular examples had to be qualified to be limited to "free" (as in open-source) software. The majority of popular software isn't open source at all. Your examples also include software that is 1) maintained by copyright-holding commercial organizations who 2) rely on the asymmetric relationship created by copyleft to build a sustainable business in which they can actually sell IP rights beyond copyleft for profit.

The copyleft ideal of "user freedom" is founded on the premise of a software industry barter economy in which the only tradable resource is not even software, since that's freely copied by anyone, but rather, actual time spent writing software.

This is insane, not least of all because the vast majority of humanity can not and does not want to write software, and even if that wasn't the case, time spent writing software is literally worthless outside of social standing.

You can't use bartered time to pay rent or buy food, which means you cannot actually build a sustainable economy around purely copyleft software ideals in which anyone is able to recoup the real-world costs of spending time writing software in the first place.

It's notable that your popular examples had to be qualified to be limited to "free" (as in open-source) software.

Um... you asked for free software copyleft examples, so obviously. Why is "free" in scare quotes again? Open source hijacked free, not the other way around.

The majority of popular software isn't open source at all.

Irrelevant to the point at hand.

maintained by copyright-holding commercial organizations

Completely irrelevant. There is nothing about free software that is opposed to business. It is perfectly fine that commercial organizations work on free software.

The copyleft ideal of "user freedom" is founded on the premise of a software industry barter economy in which the only tradable resource is not even software, since that's freely copied by anyone, but rather, actual time spent writing software.

No, that's open source. Free software makes ethical arguments for the Four Freedoms, largely based on determining one's destiny, being in control of one's computing and privacy concerns.

This is insane, not least of all because the vast majority of humanity can not and does not want to write software

False premise aside, that's the great thing about software. You don't need an extremely large force of programmers to satisfy most needs. This is because software is a non-rivalrous, non-scarce good.

time spent writing software is literally worthless outside of social standing

Not factoring in the end product?

You don't make money off free software from bartering time. You've set a ludicrous straw man through and through.

As I mentioned earlier, software is non-rivalrous (or even anti-rivalrous, with utility increasing along with use) and non-scarce. You simply cannot sustainably sell it on a per-unit basis like it's a shrink wrapped box, not without maintaining artificial scarcity through IP law, creating a deadweight loss.

In light of this reality, one must rethink their business models. Possibilities then emerge from dual licensing, consulting work, selling merchandise, etc. etc. A common approach is also SaaS, but that poses ethical dilemmas of its own.

You set up a false premise as to the motivations of free software beg the question by assuming that non-rivalrous, non-scarce goods can be marketed sustainably using traditional business models based on information asymmetry.

> Not factoring in the end product?

> False premise aside, that's the great thing about software. You don't need an extremely large force of programmers to satisfy most needs. This is because software is a non-rivalrous, non-scarce good.

Someone has to write the software. If the only software that's worth writing is the software you yourself need, then the only software that gets written will be designed for people who write software.

What about all the people who can't write software?

The market meets their needs by allowing them to exchange money for software. This allows programmers to solve their needs (food, shelter, clothing) while doing work includes meeting the needs of others -- this includes hiring people in non-development roles -- such as artists and UX designers -- that are necessary to produce software usable by more than other software developers.

If software is freely distributable without restriction, this ancient human economic model fails, and what you're left with are "free software" business models that work for only a very narrow set of problems in which developer and capitalist interests align.

In my world view, there's nothing ethical about laying claim to all future work output of my own in exchange for incorporating any amount of copyleft code.

So you're saying that you don't believe someone can ethically sell their own work at a price they choose?

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