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Comment by __alexs | Hacker News Reader

> What a sensationalist title. They dropped GPL, leaving MIT. This is a big win. MIT is significantly more free than GPL

Define your terms. "significantly more free" is a nonsense statement. At least the FSF has a strong definition of "free". I haven't seen anything nearly as compelling from any other Free software communities.

Given that jQuery was distributed under a dual MIT/GPL license this has basically no effect on anything anyway.

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> At least the FSF has a strong definition of "free".

The FSF's own Free Software Definition includes the MIT license. The MIT license also provides additional freedoms not required by the FSD.

That doesn't make it "significantly more Free" just equal. MIT is not copyleft. I think arguing about quantities of freedom is fairly meaningless. Especially in this case where this is no effective difference in the rights of developers or end users.

The specific freedoms that I'm referring to are that derivative works need not also be licensed the same way. With the MIT license, I can make derivative software and can distribute it in binary form, without providing the source code. Additionally, I can release my derivative work under a non-GPL (or non-MIT) license.

Must != Free.

With GPL, you must share derived source.

With MIT, you can share derived source.

Therefore, MIT is more free than GPL.

The GPL "free" refers to the freedom of end users, not developers.

And why would developers sacrifice their own freedom just because of freedom of end users?

Also, the fact the FSF has its own definition of words "free" and "freedom" doesn't make that others are not free to use the more common meaning of the word. Free != "free"

Why does there need to be a difference? Aren't they often one and the same?

My definition of "more free" for a license: license X is more free than license Y if the things allowed under X are a strict superset of those allowed under Y.

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