In the last 28 years of publishing software, I’ve had three distinct eras of software licensing. All of my recent stuff is available under the European Union Public License 1.2, and I thought to explain why.

This year I decided to switch my “default license” to EUPL-1.2. This is an OSI-approved free software license created and published by the European Union. And it is quite a divergence from the licenses I’ve used in the past. EUPL is a strong copyleft license that closes the “SaaS loophole” by requiring reciprocal licensing regardless of how the software is distributed.

Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along.

We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires.

And so it is time to stop messing about with permissive licenses. If corporations don’t want to use our software under our terms, they are free to spend the effort or tokens to build their own.

  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
    153·
    2 days ago

    Personally, I also think that much of the hate which one would find e.g. on reddit or the orange site against copyleft licenses in general, and the GPL specifically was probably astroturfing from corporations for which it was just an obstacle to appropiate more unpaid volunteer work for the commons for free.

    For the Linux kernel - and for GNU/Linux as an OS - the GPL was never a problem. On the contrary: Without it, the kernel would not be what it is (the historic Torvalds - Tabenbaum debate shows the reasons quite clearly).

    The same is true, by the way for the GNU Guix project: Very few arguments against it are logical or really hold water. It is, for example, perfectly possile to publish a Guix channel for a commercial game or proprietary software on ones own web site - just as you can do with a docker image. And the way Guix takes care of dependencies and updates makes it probably the easiest way to do such. Because you can use Guix as a package manager on most distros - I use it on Debian - I find it more reasonable than using snaps, docker, or flatpaks.

    The reason for the hate is likely something else: That you can’t commercialise and embrace the whole, source-based ecosystem.

    For example, you can’t use the Guix infrastructure to promote or advertise commercial, non+free stuff. But expecting or demanding to be able to do that is just ridiculous: Nobody expects from Microsoft or Apple that they feel obliged to promote or market Adobe or Oracle products. Alone the idea that companies could demand that shows how entitled the corporations behave in respect to free software.

  • plyth@feddit.orgEnglish
    121·
    2 days ago

    Not to invalidate his points but:

    We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires.

    We have free software. We have Linux. We have Graphene OS.

    Everybody can build whatever they want. That’s a huge win.

    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
      11·
      2 days ago

      Everybody can build whatever they want.

      I do not see how that adresses his core argument - that permissive licenses enabled things we do not want and which subvert individual and collective freedoms.

      More to the point, the GPL and its sisters are designed to grant rights to people.

      While the “everybody” in your sentence above includes corporations like Microsoft, Facebook and Anthropic which do very unfree things with open source tools.

      This is not the same intent.

      • ravenn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        2·
        24 hours ago

        someone can want permissive licenses, want people to not use it in a way someone doesnt see fit, want individual and collective freedoms, and understand that one of those wants is not like the others (perhaps its strictly incompatible) and accept that inside themself is a want to police freedoms while wanting no policing of freedoms. freedom is just that. a seagull does not seek permission to migrate, or devour horseshoe crabs while migrating. freedom has a nature.

        so to address the core argument, freedom is a double edged sword. to make it single edged is to make it something other than freedom. and thats fine to want, but the argument for permissive licenses being used for things dear programmer didnt intend being something to avoid is an argument for something other than freedom.

        i usually lurk, but this weird cognitive dissonance is all throughout this and similar communities. yes people have a freedom to share code freely, and not worry about political and economic nuances of what copy right left or wrong means. yes poltical influences have the freedom to murky the waters. yes economic influences have the freedom to feed you that murky water of contracts and aggreements and chain you into their systrms. yes you have the freedom to just turn the binky blinky box off and touch grass. yes it doesnt mean its fair. fair is an event run by carnies.

        so maybe we shouldnt argue what is fair when it comes to freedom of expression (the umbrella shielding all copyleft arguments), but instead argue the reality that if you do something with technology, others should reasonably be free to assume you would be okay with that technology being used.

        and that could he a very unpeaceful way of handling it.

        and to really argue avout copyright is to argue that a string of 0’s and 1’s through an interpreter that can also be defined as 0’s and 1’s is something more than the clever rybbing of two (often very large) base 2 numbers against each other for whatever purpose we really wish. and that concept itself isnt copyrightable, because its the nature of reality. and if some people learned to procedurally generate those numbers and procedurally rub them against each other, perhaps those people are just doing math and it happens to send this comment into existence, by sheer odds of brute force.

        hopefully someone reads this and understands just how immature (not wrong, just underdeveloped in thinking style) the arguements of freedom for me with code and not for thee really is.

        thank you for coming to my rant. im going back to lurking.

      • plyth@feddit.orgEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        I do not see how that adresses his core argument

        It doesn’t, as I wrote in my first sentence. Free software alone is just nice enough that it is more than a little gain.

        • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
          1·
          2 days ago

          So, your argument is merely that the point he blogs about does not matter? Or do you somehow not want people to discuss it? Why?

          • plyth@feddit.orgEnglish
            21·
            2 days ago

            So, your argument is merely that the point he blogs about does not matter?

            No

            Or do you somehow not want people to discuss it?

            No

            I wrote that I don’t want to invalidate his points. I think they are valid.

            All that our efforts did

            That statement is just too strong.

  • vas@lemmy.ml
    41·
    2 days ago

    From what I understood,

    P.S. It’s interesting. Has anyone in this (fediverse) community used the license already? What is your impression?

    P.P.S. Personally, I wish they would not start their PDF with preambles such as

    COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING DECISION (EU) 2017/863
    updating the open source software licence EUPL to further facilitate the sharing and reuse of software developed by public administrations
    In order to further facilitate the sharing and reuse of software developed by public administrations concerning the use of an open source software licence, a new EUPL version, EUPL v. 1.2, should be adopted.

    If I read this word-to-word, my brain wants to zone out. I cannot / don’t fully want to understand what they’re talking about. I want the license first, and I want to learn when and how it came to be later, on a separate page. (Not joking or being sarcastic here, I literally would want it later, e.g. last page or referenced below.) Otherwise it distracts attention and it gives me a feeling that they might be too full of themselves and busy virtue signaling, as opposed to being a strong ally and have my back covered. Maybe I’m exaggerating? Anyway, that’s just one downside. I do like some of the other parts listed above.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      It allows mixing EUPL-1.2 code with other copyleft licenses, less restrictive than GPL.

      Yes and no. I guess it depends on what you call “less restrictive”, or “lesser copyleft”. The comparison table makes it a point to mention that “lesser copyleft” is not allowed, if “lesser” means it takes away some of the core freedoms awarded by the EUPL.

      To that end, the EUPL 1.2 comes with an explicit list of other copyleft licenses that are compatible for cross-licensing. This page has a good explanation on how it works:

      Note: this does NOT change the EUPL licence of the original software component (that is NOT re-licensed). In addition, for all derivative works, EUPL provisions stay appliable where not in conflict with the compatible licence. this is because Article 5 states that the compatible licence will prevail in case its provisions conflict with those of the EUPL.

      For example, the EUPL accepts, when needed, the LGPL and MPL for covering derivatives (these licenses are known to be “less or weak copyleft”). But the LGPL and MPL do not conflict with the EUPL on the coverage of remote use (SaaS) or on the obligation to publish source code. When the compatible license is silent on such points, the EUPL obligations persist.

      There’s also the issue of what you mean by “mixing”. I’ve covered cross-licensing above. If you mean interoperability (aka linking) that is explicitly allowed by the EUPL 1.2.

      • vas@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 day ago

        P.S. Also, thanks for the clarification. It makes sense. I just have to read this more carefully, should I adopt the license. Do you use it by the way?

      • vas@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 day ago

        I was talking about mixing indeed. An example of a license that I think is less strong - but can be mixed with EUPL - is MPL (the Mozilla one). Your quote clarifies what happens in that case though: EUPL’s requirements still hold. I still haven’t looked at it sufficiently carefully. Also, sadly, the referenced page has multiple mistakes so I feel I need to read the actual license in detail before getting convinced. (My take on tivoization is also different than what the author of the page where he says “Note: This is still controversial: …”.) That page is also just a “news” article, and not a definitive source. So it’s OK to be less polished, but then it means a push for me to trust the license itself only.