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

When you say it becomes a need does this mean that not merging them would course the projects to fail?

Fail in what sense? It would definitely make consumer-minded people unsatisfied and most likely drive them away to another project/fork. For tech enthusiasts it would only do good (considering the contributions are enshitifying).

This means that if the option to merge the contribution didn't exist in the first place (like non free software) the project would fail.

I'm probably missing what you're trying to say, but since contributions come from companies, they would definitely be merged if the project was owned by the company making contributions.

Actual freedom is taking away peoples rights to make things worse. If you want an example of what happens when actual freedom is available look at the free market.

Strange to hear that while discussing free software but anyways freedom is not a static notion. Compared to feudal economy, free market is free, but it's not free judging by our modern needs. And in fact it's the exact thing I'm trying to go away from. Free, open and decentralised production I was talking about is its successor that breaks through the alienation and brings creative freedom to every individual.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

spending 5 minutes writing up a comment only to accedently press the cancel button ): Lemmy devs should put a confirmation for canceling when it's above a certain character limit or something.

[–] myszka@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Yeah that's a pain. I've also had Android kill Lemmy in the background while I went to my browser to check a spelling of a word... A draft feature would help too