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
    121·
    11 hours 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
    9·
    11 hours 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
      9·
      10 hours 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.

      • plyth@feddit.orgEnglish
        2·
        10 hours 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·
          10 hours 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
            2·
            9 hours 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
    31·
    8 hours 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·
      6 hours 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·
        5 hours 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·
        5 hours 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.