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.

  • fairport [he/him,comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Yeah, maybe it’s a view I have internalized since I write code for a living and I have to be really careful about licenses in software we use.

    If course if there was no profit motive in software, GPL would be completely fine.

    I still think the viral nature with GPL is a bit too much, I prefer LGPL model where you can use unmodified version of a library without your own software becoming GPL. It also encourages you to provide patches upstream so everyone benefits from the improvement without having to GPL their code.

    • ToastGhost [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah your perspectiveon this is basically that of the corporation, because in doing your job you do enact their will, so what makes your job easiest is what the corporation dictating your work wants. It is a pain for corporations by design, and part of your job is managing this difficulty, in which they place all blame upon you, its easy to end up hating the license instead of the corporation that demands you avoid it.