• 0 Posts
  • 8 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 7th, 2023

help-circle


  • And permissively licensed utils have been around thanks to BSD and it’s never been an issue.

    The distinction is that BSD coreutils are not attempting to be a drop-in 1:1 compatible replacement of GNU coreutils. The Rust coreutils has already accomplished this with its inclusion into Ubuntu 26.04.

    If I wanted a permissively licensed system, I’d use BSD. I don’t, so I primarily use Linux. I think citing a proprietary OS like macOS as a reason why permissively licensed coreutils are OK is kind of funny. It’s easy to forget that before before the GPL there were many incompatible UNIX systems developed by different companies, and IMO the GPL has kept MIT and BSD-licensed projects “Honest”, so-to-speak. Without the GPL to keep things in check, we’d be back to how things were in the 80s.

    So what’s next on the docket for Ubuntu? A permissively licensed libc?






  • Interesting writing. But my concern is that social responsibility will be dumped by the cost factor as he said. Anything that is GPL is under threat by an AI-based reimplementation. The cost of doing that seems artificially low now (investment hype phase, not ROI phase of these businesses), so it’s not really the idea anyone could do it that concerns me. The concerning part is no matter the price, bigger companies can take the hit and now direct their resources to undo the GPL everywhere and simultaneously replace labor in doing it.