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.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/35110129

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.

  • Daniel Quinn@lemmy.caEnglish
    16·
    8 hours ago

    I understand why you’d want to avoid MIT, but as someone who generally favours the AGPL for everything I do, I’m curious why you opted for the EUPL instead.

  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
    233·
    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 - 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.

    For example, you 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.

    • Obin@feddit.org
      1·
      25 minutes ago

      was probably astroturfing from corporations

      Could be. At least when I still was on r/linux a few years ago there were about three usual suspects who would pop up every time a topic even went in the general direction of licensing and spewed their toxicity. To me these people had less of a corporate shill vibe and more of a undiagnosed mental health issues vibe, but I obviously can’t say for sure.

  • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
    67·
    10 hours ago

    What a shitty choice of a license. Typical EU legal garbage full of duplications and “lawyers” thinking “more is better”.

    Also:

    The provisions of this Licence can be accepted by clicking on an icon ‘I agree’ placed under the bottom of a window displaying the text of this Licence or by affirming consent in any other similar way, in accordance with the rules of applicable law. Clicking on that icon indicates your clear and irrevocable acceptance of this Licence and all of its terms and conditions.

    Lol, these morons. Of course the EU pencil pushers would hyperfixate on “clicking a button”.

    /a European

    • libewa@feddit.org
      84·
      9 hours ago

      And the GPL has less legal garbage? One of the goals of the EUPL was that it can be understood by laymen, which doesn’t really hold true for the GPL. Those “simple” licenses like the MIT license don’t work in the EU btw, since you cannot completely renounce liability or copyright.

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
        10·
        7 hours ago

        You may be right about liability, I don’t know. But public domain is a thing in the EU and it applies to expired copyright, things that cannot be copyrighted, explicit attribution etc.

        Besides, the MIT license does not renounce copyright, on the contrary.

        • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
          2·
          2 hours ago

          Public domain is a thing in the EU but not releasing anything into public domain.

          In Germany, I cannot renounce my copyright to anything. I can give you an indefinite, unrestricted license to do whatever but I still own the copyright. It will only ever become public domain 70 years after my death, not a day sooner or later.

          • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
            1·
            49 minutes ago

            I can give you an indefinite, unrestricted license to do whatever but I still own the copyright.

            Isn’t this distinction academic?

        • libewa@feddit.org
          4·
          6 hours ago

          Maybe it’s not the EU as a whole? But interestingly, your article says that FLOSS is exempt from these rules, which is great!

          • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
            5·
            2 hours ago

            Generally, what we have in the EU is strict liability for commercial products, but not for things like gifts or FOSS software developed in a non-commercial manner. Except when damages are caused on purpose or because of gross negligence.

            Some examples (German law, which is quite strict about personal liability):

            • You cause an accident -> you are liable.

            • Your small kid causes an accident -> you are liable.

            • Your unleashed dog runs over the street, causes a truck to steer into a shop -> you are liable.

            • Your car does not work because of improper maintenance, and causes an accident -> you are liable.

            • Your dishwasher floods the flat below you with water while you are away -> you are liable.

            • Your car’s assisted braking system goes out of control because of defective software delivered by the manufacturer -> the manufacturer is liable.

            • You gift somebody a car with a minor defect which you are not aware of, he has an accident -> no liability for you.

            • You knowingly gift somebody a car with defective brakes, without telling him, he has an accident -> you are liable.

            • Your physician uses some X-Ray device software which has a catastrophic bug and causes that you have radioactive burns all over your body -> the manufacturer of the software is liable.

            (and here is where EU law probably differs form US law: In the US, software vendors can and do disclaim all liability. THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE IN THE EU, and thus such a contractual clause is probably invalid in its entirety, while leaving the contract valid. (And that is why you should NOT write your own licenses.))

            • That X-Ray software uses a non-commercial contribution for solving matrices in Numerical Python which a volunteer wrote in 2015 -> the FOSS contributor is not liable, the responsibility is for the manufacturer to test for correctness of the free stuff.

            What is interesting is: The EU has now decent security to the expectations which manufacturers of software or mechatronic systems are liable for.