this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
631 points (91.8% liked)
Programmer Humor
32453 readers
616 users here now
Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)
Rules:
- Posts must be relevant to programming, programmers, or computer science.
- No NSFW content.
- Jokes must be in good taste. No hate speech, bigotry, etc.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
GPL is too restrictive. I prefer MIT/CC0/BSD 0 clause.
Why is too restrictive?
I don't like how it forces everything it touches to be GPL. Even if the works it touches are unrelated to the original functionality. It restricts what I can do with the code I wrote without the help of the GPL'ed code. For example, if I write an entire game: gameplay, physics, renderer, networking, etc., all myself. Then I need to include a snippet of GPL'ed code for any reason, all that work now no longer belongs to me. I, the worker, no longer have access to the fruit of my labor. Instead all of it, disproportionally, is given away to the collective world. I lose the fruits of my labor.
With others, I do not. You can give your code to the community, you can even adopt licenses to say if you improve the code you must also open source it and give it to the community but when you then say and you also have to give away any code it touches inconsequential to it's functionality. That feels too restrictive for me. I honestly would like to see people adopt a middle ground. LGPL does this afaik and it feels like a better choice than GPL or BSD if you are trying to keep just your creation and it's derivatives open.
If you use my snippet, I want your game. If you don't agree, then you can't use my snippet. The purpose of the GPL is simply to prevent people who don't share from benefitting from people who do, which I think is pretty fair.
Sure, it's a disagreement on what fair sharing is, and honestly. I don't want your code if I can't meet the intent of the license. That's fine. It's just the reason I don't GPL my code. It feels like I am enacting restrictions on someone else that doesn't feel fair.