this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Using other people’s code in general does remove your exclusivity of ownership, regardless of license, since the code other people wrote belongs to them.

it removes my exclusivity of ownership over my own code. Not talking about the small snippet that I don't have exclusive ownership over. Pretty basic distinction here.

What you are saying is you should be entitled to make money off of someone else’s work. If you want to make money on something, you may be required to do the work yourself.

I'd gladly pay them a smaller fee but that's the reason I don't GPL my code. I don't feel like the fee the GPL charges by default (the requirement to license all the code it touches into GPL) is fair. You clearly disagree and that's fine. I won't use your code.

Individuals writing software and selling licenses for is not, in the grand scheme of things, a “large way” to get money. The vast majority of money made from writing software is programmers being paid to write software for someone else who will own the license.

I'm an indie game developer so I disagree. How I get my money is selling copies of my software is largely how I make money. If you want to argue that in the business corporate software complex everyone is just writing code for money and no one is selling it as a copy, that's fine, I don't care about that work. I just know why I don't like GPLing my code. It's too restrictive for me and thus I feel it's unfair to ask of other people to follow.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

it removes my exclusivity of ownership over my own code.

Your statement is false. It does not remove or diminish your exclusivity of ownership over your own code. That's just not how copyright works. I don't know how else to put it.

I’d gladly pay them a smaller fee

If I ever wrote code you wanted to use in a game you wanted to sell, and you reached out to me, I'd just let you use the code under a different license for free. My main concern is that corporations would freeload off my work. Some people wouldn't even do it for any fee. I think that's silly, but they get to set the terms of how we use their code.

selling copies of my software is largely how I make money

That's great! You are part of a tiny group of people who manage to make money this way, and that's no small accomplishment. More power to you, and I wish you more success. If you feel comfortable revealing it here, what game(s) do you sell?