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.
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The problem with all of this is that being a part of the community doesn't buy me food.
The main incentive for a developer working for a capitalist to use free software is to make their job easier or to get their boss off their ass. GPL doesn't do that, and in fact actively works against it.
If the GPL could incentivize developers to turn against their bosses, that would be great. But a software license can't do that.
So the only people who contribute to GPL are either independently wealthy or weirdly enthusiastic about doing their day job for free in their spare time.