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"No right to relicense this project" - on changing the license of Mark Pilgrim's chardet from LGPL to MIT after a vibe-coded rewrite

8953

1d 14h ago by lemmy.ml/u/cypherpunks in technology@lemmy.ml from github.com

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44059967

for those not familiar with Mark Pilgrim, he is/was a prolific author, blogger, and hacker who abruptly disappeared from the internet in 2011.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/968527

HN comments

Isn't the LGPL supposed to be relicensable as opposed to GPL's share-alike?

28 replies

nope, here *GPL acts like cancer, once it touches something, it remains *GPL until the last bit of it is still there.

Cancer is a bad analogy. It's more like antibodies against non-free bactetia :)

I have a completely different view of what free means. xGPL are restrictive and sticky.

The freedom to deny others the same freedom?

Ok, maybe explain the restrictions that offend you so much?

GPL licenses are straight-up cancer, they force every derivative or linked project to adopt their viral copyleft rules, nuking proprietary reuse or easy mixing with other codebases, while a weird GPL cult preaches it as the one true path to "openness" and "freedom". As someone who codes purely for fun, I like the dead-simple clarity of MIT and BSD: just keep the notice and license text, then do whatever the hell you want. No GPL bullshit or compliance headaches for me, permissive licenses like these keep my sanity intact.

That's... The point of the GPL licenses, to preserve copyleft. I also prefer the simplicity of the MIT license for my own works, but I respect the copyleft ideals.

If it's all your own work then a license is purely for others to follow. MIT and GPL license can be just as simple as including a textfile of that license in the project.

Ideally one includes a header in each code file so ensure people just looking at that file without project context know the license.

GPL is especially popular with people who don't want their labor of love to become a source of free labor for corporations who will tweak it, close the source, directly profit off it, and never donate or contribute patches. For them, it's an antiparasitic license.

I've heard that "corporate parasite" argument way too often, but it's massively overrated. Open Source allows selling anyway, MIT, BSD and GPL all do. If someone makes smart changes and lives off it, that's awesome, not reprehensible!

GPL only forces source disclosure when distributing binaries, not for every damn thing – imagine you land a juicy company contract: you tweak a GPL work, deliver the binaries, and only have to hand the modified source TO THAT COMPANY, NOT the whole world! That's why AGPL fanatics had to invent their SaaS trap. For me as a hobby coder, GPLs are just pointless headaches instead of real freedom.

This is naive. Very naive.

We would not have such a huge Linux infrastructure and support for all those different components without GPL.

Every modern car uses Linux. I repeat, one of the most locked down industries uses Linux on custom hardware on millions of cars.

Indeed, very limiting.

Or, gcc, the Compiler everybody uses to build Linux stuff and the kernel? This is a direct GNU project. Without GPL and the requirements to provide changes, we would have thousands of gcc based, closed source compilers. Most likely expensive to, to build optimized arm code and other stuff.

But, feel free to protest the usage of GPL by not using any GPL licensed software.

It's not naive – naive is believing Linux' success comes only from GPL. That's ridiculous. Windows sells like crazy too, does that make its license the nonplusultra?

Linux booms because of Open Source (not just GPL), sponsoring (IBM, RedHat), thousands of volunteers, and pure luck. Without GPL? Sure, some BSD-derivative would've eaten that niche.

GCC? Without GPL we'd have more compilers – not just one monopolist. You're confusing protection with innovation death.

GCC? Without GPL we'd have more compilers – not just one monopolist. You're confusing protection with innovation death.

This one is so stupid, I had to think how to respond.

Why? What prevents anybody to implement a new Compiler, looking at LLVM ... ?

What we would have are closed source gcc forks, that is not freedom. This is the opposite.

I am old enough to remember buying a fucking Borland license

I work on gcc code, I know how ugly, historic in parts and confusing the Codebase can be. But I also know why. LLVM has no such legacy, and this is a good thing. I believe some day LLVM will replace gcc because of that. And LLVM uses Apache 2.0.

So, what exactly was your argument here?

So, what exactly was your argument here?

Duno, you tried to convince me that the xGPL restrictions are only for my benefit. I strongly disagree with that opinion, that's all. And I do not really care about argument, if something is used more often, then it's best suited for me. I avoid to contribute to GPL projects and prefer some with MIT or BSD licenses.

I am old enough to remember buying a fucking Borland license

I hope you are old enough to agree with me that TurboVision was fucking awesome.

I work on gcc code

All the hate on you. No, no, joking, I appreciate your work. gcc is a mess, I know.

Look at the number of MIT projects with such founding and contributions. Compare them to copy left projects.

What you will find is, that copy left projects have far more backing, financial support and contributions.

There are studies on this...

Qnd to keep Microsoft as an example. If the kernel would be permissive, what would Microsoft stop from using it, adding some property stuff on it and use their monopoly to force those feature everywhere.

Now they have taken the work of thousands of contributors and take all the money.

Now they have taken the work of thousands of contributors and take all the money.

I have no problem with it.

Did you contribute to the kernel? Because, I for sure have a problem with it. And I did contribute.

Well at first, nice that we have a kernel developer here, it's not so easy to get your code into. And second, nope, I do not contributed to the kernel. I once wrote a module for educational purposes a long long time ago. Then FUSE came along and it helped me to solve the task with "more comfort".

I did contribute once. And it was a pain. 20 lines of code but hours of work, Mailinglists, feedback, ...

Don't het me wrong , it was fun. But would I have done the same for BSD, so that apple could use this? Hell no

Perhaps this is our fundamental difference. I write code, solve my small task and have fun by doing it. If someone can get something of it, it's twice as nice.

And that's fine. And everybody should license his code as he likes.

But my point stands. String copyleft is important.

That does not mean that LGPL is always a good idea, and charted is a good example, as the python stdlib is MIT licensed, and therefore an LGPL charted has no chance of getting accepted.

Btw, the easiest first step would have been: mail every contributor (there are not that many in that case) that provided more then hast some minor fixes and ask for permission. That is a valid way to change the license.

I agree at the point, that everyone should use that license he like.

Btw, the easiest first step would have been: mail every contributor (there are not that many in that case) that provided more then hast some minor fixes and ask for permission. That is a valid way to change the license.

No, I think, that would not work this way, you have to ask every contributor, no matter how big the influence was. And everyone must agree unanimously. It's almost an impossible task.

I agree regarding consesus. Unlikely, but: heaving major contributions greenlighted and only replace parts of the code are fat note feasible.

No communication happened to my understanding at any point with any contributor.

OSX and FreeBSD show that it isn't an overrated argument.

What's wrong with OSX?

Licenses like the MIT are built to support grifters that just want to take and not contribute back, so...

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