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Comment by SoKamil | Hacker News Reader

What is the stance of Your Average Corp’s security department on public domain software? Do they accept software under such licensing (or lack thereof)?

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From an American perspective, there’s no mechanical difference between that and the MIT license when it comes to security.

They care more about the package being maintained, bug-free, and their preferred vulnerability database showing no active exploits.

At least in my experience, anyway. Other companies may have stricter requirements.

Who cares? Seriously. Whether a commercial entity who wants to be able to benefit from your work accepts the license you choose for work you do is as much a concern as whether or not the prime minister of Liechtenstein accepts the color you paint the outside of your house in the USA. That is: none.

Bad analogy.. if they truly care what colour your house is then there's plenty of strings they could pull. I mean, a good number of large U.S. company's tax and corporate structures depend heavily on Liechtenstein's government’s rules..

Some people have standing for better or mostly worse - HOAs and local councils. The government of Liechtenstein does not.

Kinda depends on whether you're publishing open source software so that people can use it. And if you're not publishing open source software so that people can use it, why exactly are you doing it? If you don't want people to use it, GPL is the way to go. If you do want people to use it, MIT or BSD is a much better way to go.

As a counterexample: I would rather use GPL or AGPL licensed code on my machine, than merely MIT licensed code, because I see the philosophical difference behind it, due to copyleft. Someone who makes some code available under (A)GPL wants it to stay available under a free software license. Someone who releases under MIT is either uninformed, or has different motivation , that does not fully align with keeping things libre for people. It is less safe against being made proprietary in the future. Anyone can come and make a new version that is proprietary and has that one more feature, luring people into using the proprietary version instead of the open source one.

So I have much more trust in (A)GPL licensed projects, and I see them as more for the people than MIT licensed projects.

Linux, Git and the entire GNU system are counterexamples. Meanwhile FreeBSD dies by the day.

People != the legal departments of corporations.

GPL is for when you want people to use it. MIT is for when you want megacorporations to turn it into enshittified proprietary software and profit off of it without giving back to you.

Sure. Why not?

>"If you don't want people to use it, GPL is the way to go"

lol

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