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.
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.
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 both on Debian and Arch - 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. And also, in a primarily source-based system, you have less control over other peoples computers: You can still offer binary packages similar to Ubuntu ppas, but you will need to explain to people why you want them to install binary stuff from you, which can take control of their computer. Do you have any experience with a relationship where one side wanted complete control and it turned out good for you?
For example, you also can’t use the Guix infrastructure (e.g. their mailing list or download server) 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.
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 - Tanenbaum 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 both on Debian and Arch - 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. And also, in a primarily source-based system, you have less control over other peoples computers: You can still offer binary packages similar to Ubuntu ppas, but you will need to explain to people why you want them to install binary stuff from you, which can take control of their computer. Do you have any experience with a relationship where one side wanted complete control and it turned out good for you?
For example, you also can’t use the Guix infrastructure (e.g. their mailing list or download server) 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.