I'm a very much pro free software person and I used to think that GPL is basically the only possible option when it comes to benefits for free software (and not commercial use), but I've recently realised this question is actually much more ambiguous.

I think there are two sides to this issue:

GPL forces all contributions to stay open-source which prevents commercialisation* of FOSS projects, but also causes possible interference of corporate software design philosophy and all kinds of commercial decisions, if contributions come from companies.
MIT-like permissive licenses, on the other hand, easily allow for making proprietary forks, which, however, separates commercial work from the rest of the project, therefore making the project more likely to stay free both of corporate influence and in general.

So it boils down to the fact, that in my opinion what makes free software free is not only the way it's distributed but also the whole philosophy behind it: centralisation vs. decentralisation, passive consumer vs. co-developper role of the user etc. And this is where things start to be a bit controversial.

What do you think?

*UPD: wrong word. I mean close-sourcing and turning into a profitable product instead of something that fulfils your needs

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[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I genuinely don't know what you're arguing anymore, because your logic is completely backwards. You're blaming the GPL for "enshitification" and bloat, which is utterly nonsensical. The license has fuck all to do with how lean or bloated a piece of software is, that's a result of developer priorities and corporate roadmaps. The GPL's entire purpose is to enforce freedom, and a key part of that freedom is the right to fork a project and strip out the bloat yourself if the main version goes off the rails. You then admit that corporate contributions are valuable, but your proposed solution is to letting them keep their work proprietary which is the very thing that accelerates enshitification. You're arguing that to stop companies from making software worse, we should give them a free pass to take public labor, build their own walled gardens, and contribute nothing back. That's just corporate apologia that encourages the exact freeloading the GPL was designed to prevent. Your entire point is a self-contradictory mess.

[–] myszka@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Bro calm down, I'm not trying to insult you. I'm sorry what I said made you so upset.

I'm not blaming the GPL of anything, I'm not saying license defines software design, I'm not proposing a solution and the whole point of my post was about the contradictory nature of the problem. You just seem to have missed my whole reasoning. Now, I don't know why looking at the negative sides of the trade-off the GPL is making bugs you so much, but if it's really not your thing, you should stop wasting your time on this self-contradictory mess and just be happy with GPL. Especially because I'm too small for my "corporate apologia" to be effective.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

I'm perfectly calm and nobody is upset here. I'm simply explaining to you that your argument does not make sense. If you want to look at negative sides of the trade-off then come up with some arguments that make logical sense. It's quite telling that you start making personal attacks when you can't actually address the points being made.