> Your parents probably taught you about the Golden Rule when you were young: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The GPL is the legal embodiment of this Golden Rule
Funny. For me, the Golden Rule still leads me to the opposite conclusion: I want people to share their work with me open-handedly, without telling me what I can do with it or what other software I am allowed to combine it with. The more strings are attached, the less it feels like it's really sharing. The most annoying example of this is when companies open-source their works under a copyleft license in an obvious attempt to get free labor from the community while reserving the ability to actually profit from that work for themselves.
And therefore, when I share the software I work on, I prefer to share it open-handedly.
>The most annoying example of this is when companies open-source their works under a copyleft license in an obvious attempt to get free labor from the community while reserving the ability to actually profit from that work for themselves.
Similar to this, Qt has a LGPL license option, but when using it for a proprietary product, they really push you to buy their commercial license, and have basically no info on how to actually do LGPL compliance in the specific case of Qt's libs.
I get that it's not their responsibility to make it easy for me to use an open source lib in a closed source product, but it just feels like they're using LGPL compliance as a threat if you don't pay their license.
Their messaging on that can be a bit (probably intentionally) unclear sometimes (and from what I hear they have pushy salespeople), but many companies use it successfully under LGPL terms, and for typical desktop apps the compliance effort isn't that large. (embedded devices etc are a different problem, I suspect that's where they make most of their licensing money)
They also are providing a lot of value to the open-source communities building on Qt, so I don't think they are a great example for what GP mentioned.
Funny. For me, the Golden Rule still leads me to the opposite conclusion: I want people to share their work with me open-handedly, without telling me what I can do with it or what other software I am allowed to combine it with. The more strings are attached, the less it feels like it's really sharing. The most annoying example of this is when companies open-source their works under a copyleft license in an obvious attempt to get free labor from the community while reserving the ability to actually profit from that work for themselves.
And therefore, when I share the software I work on, I prefer to share it open-handedly.