NotAwfulTech

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Total Reciprocity Public License (trplfoundation.org)

submitted 4 days ago by antifuchs@awful.systems to c/notawfultech@awful.systems

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I know copyright isn’t the way to address what’s wrong with tech, but this here is a great way to poison the well for medium-to-large enterprise companies leeching off open source: if your software requires the work to function, it’s entire source code needs to be published.

Considering using this for my more polished stuff just to irk the companies that would otherwise be happy to use it.

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

(Posting this at 01:41 after a very, very full week and with flubrain: take considered potentially faulty on delivery)

I’ve often thought about this specific problem part, and i gotta admit I’m pre-conflicted. Due aforementioned note I haven’t read the license yet (I’ll do in the week and post a reply with thoughts) but from what I’ve observed to date:

only certain kinds/sets of corps appear to give a damn about licensing
even if one initiates legal action against the offenders, they’re typically banking on financial asymmetry first and inter-area regulatory friction second

And ito a policy having defensive teeth, those are two load bearing pillars that turn out to not even be moth eaten wooden beams but instead rice crispies held together in a sugar glaze

Consider: what if some popular projects had a “if you’re using this in something making >= $thresholdOrPortionCalc, you must support the project with $percentageOfRevenue” clause in licensing? Modulo the payment distribution admit (lol @ modern aml nightmare), would help a ton with the open source funding squeeze. But can you imagine the bleeting (and probably parasitic forking) if that started happening?

Put another way: without copyright and IP reform (into what shape I have only vague suggestions), how far do licenses get us?

(I’m sorry if this sounds extremely negative -afaict with current regulatory climates and where-IP-is-at, it’s the broadstrokes view. Icbw in detail (I expect I am at least in some detail). But I want to be wrong because god this all fucking sucks)