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.

  • garbology [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Online stuff shouldn't be "poisoned" by GPL, only AGPL, yeah?

    • crime [she/her, any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Afaik that's backwards: using GPL to create derivative works requires you to GPL license your stuff too, but AGPL only applies if you distribute your derivative works (ianal but I think that applies to web stuff too? Not sure)

      • garbology [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        AGPL is the Affero GPL , and it's stricter than the GPL, because it also requires you to share your source even if you only use it to provide services online, and never distribute the program.