Hi Salvo, On 2026-07-14 23:36, Salvo Tomaselli wrote: > For me, I always default to copyleft and here's why: I'm not a scab.
There's a flawed implication here, in that people not using non-copyleft licenses are scabs. Looking at the upstream projects I'm familiar with, I do not see any correlation whatsoever between contributors and licenses. Frankly, I think most people don't even check LICENSE or COPYRIGHT files at all before filing a pull / merge request. They see a project, they have something they'd like to contribute, so they simply do. > Case 1: Some company is using my software The reality is that the GPL probably reduces the chance that they are using your software. Unless it's something all but unavoidable, such as the Linux kernel. > They might contribute back, release more libre software and so on. Again referring to the upstream projects I'm familiar with: if they *want* to contribute back, they'll contribute back, regardless of license. > Case 2: Some company avoids my software because of the license > (happened multiple times) > > In that case they will have to implement it themselves, and will have > to pay someone to do it. And if they share it under a non-copyleft license, they will have to endure endless complaints from copyleft people how the free software they paid money to create and sharing with everyone is killing free software. > Basically not using copyleft you are using your privilege of having > free time to do hobby projects to put other developers out of work. It > goes against my moral values. Wait, I can't have hobbies if they negatively impact someone else's paycheck in any way? And what if it's not a hobby; what if I'm paid to work on some MIT-licensed project? > Of course now we have Case 3: > > The company uses AI to copy paste the software, claiming it is not copyleft. If its copy-pasted (or the output resembles something close enough), copyright still applies. Best, Christian
