this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That seems a somewhat contrived example. Yes, it can theoretically happen - but in practice it would happen with a library, and most libraries are LGPL (or more permissive) anyway. By contrast, there have been plenty of stories lately of people who wrote MIT/BSD software, and then got upset when companies just took the code to add in their products, without offering much support in return.

Also, there's a certain irony in saying what essentially amounts to, "Please license your code more permissively, because I want to license mine more restrictively".

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Well, remember, this is why I don't GPL my own code, not why I don't use GPL'ed code. I want to provide to others what I want to be provided to me. I make my games from Godot, MIT-licensed. Allows people to make commercially viable games. I also contribute what I can to Godot and attempt to backport engine improvements to Godot when I can. This exchange is fair to me and I believe fair to Godot.

Games exist as products directly to the consumer. There are reasons why GPL'ed games haven't been commercially viable and those who've GPLed their game (after they have made tons of money from it) still don't include the art. They still want to keep the game as profitable as possible while GPLing what they can.

Essentially the GPL is at odds with our capitalistic society, which is fine, our capitalistic society could be a lot better if we were more socialist or communist. The place it breaks down though is that we are still in a capitalistic society and people need to be able to sell their works for money.