Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

"Anyway, I believe this kind of thinking is a shallow dismissal of the value that companies receive from starting from Libre software."

It is a dismissal of the idea, that using a different licence will magically transform the whole industry.

If the code is open, the profit orientated companies don't need to do R&D from scratch. They just take the copyleft source code and make it closed, either by simply not publishing it, or if they care about whistleblowers by rewriting it. Which is easy if you have sources of something working. Even more so today with LLMs.

That is why I am a fan of permissive licences. It is a working compromise for companies who would never consider copyleft code in critical parts of their product.



Compromise implies both parties give something. Can you explain what that is on the company’s side?


Compromise for me is, the concept of open source gets more widewspread. There is no must in giving back. And if you try to force it with copyleft .. you won't get far. I believe history is on my side here.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: