They're silly, folks. Intellectual property is a spook.

Under communism all software will be free to share, use, and modify without restriction.

This post inspired by the current Ruby mimemagic gem license drama.

In case you're not following:

  • mimemagic is a Ruby library (gem) used for detecting the MIME types of files, either by their extension or by their content
  • it's widely used and included in Rails
  • it was MIT licensed
  • it was using an xml file from freedesktop dot org, which is a GPL project
  • the GPL license means that every project that uses that software must also be GPL licensed - open-source, freely usable/modifiable/etc
  • someone from freedesktop pointed this out to the mimemagic maintainer
  • the maintainer republished the gem as GPL and yanked all the MIT licensed gems, breaking builds everywhere, and making rails currently uninstallable

I have a big headache because of ideology.

  • DashEightMate [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    what's the GPL that has an exception to the inheritance rule if the software is used as a library? I like that one the best, it avoids headaches like this.

    • femboi [they/them, she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The LGPL, if they modify your code it has to be LGPL, if they use your code in a project it can be whatever license they want