2026-11-09 13:33 UTC
Replies (9)
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@wewbull@feddit.uk 2026-11-09 13:48
People do it because they think being able to use code at work without dealing with legal issues more important than protecting the software from exploitation. It’s kinda classic American capitalist freedom thinking. American: Freedom = no regulations Others: Freedom has to be protected by regulations
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@CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-11-09 14:29
I’ll provide my perspective from a very strong advocate of FOSS and GPL specifically. Most code I write I release under GPL because I want companies to think twice before attempting to profit off of my code. AGPL specifically requires companies to release any modifications if they are publicly released. I will occasionally release some code under MIT because the code is so simple and stupid, I don’t care enough if people lift it. A few spreadsheet formulas fall into this category or a dockerfile that has maybe 4 lines in it.
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@chgxvjh@hexbear.net 2026-11-09 15:19
infosec.exchange/…/117580357792732305 has a sound explanation for example. It’s a bit small business brained but the idea that volunteer programmers are using copyright to fight large enterprises is lib brained as well.
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@Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-11-09 16:04
MIT is meant to be usable for propietary software, but also able to be distributed away for free with just the attribution notice. MIT defends its own freedom while not defending the freedom of prograams that use it.
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@TrollAccount69@lemmy.ml 2026-11-09 16:42
You got a lot of answers that explain why it might be less of a headache for a programmer who uses their output personally & in the office and how being able to sell code they didn’t write benefits anyone selling software but not anything about the social benefits of an mit license. If you developed a new powerful, secure and ultralight cryptographic algorithm for example, you might consider it a public good to place that code under an mit license so users of open and closed source software from freely distributed or for profit companies could benefit from it with as little friction as possible. I’m no supporter of mit over gpl, but that argument is not something to be discounted.
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@Evotech@lemmy.world 2026-11-09 16:51
Because that’s how we get nice open standards?
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@treadful@lemmy.zip 2026-11-09 20:21
I release code under MIT when I don’t care how it’s used. It’s as simple as that. Especially for simple projects, projects I don’t really want to support, and projects like libraries. I build using GPL when I want community involvement.
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@xthexder@l.sw0.com 2026-11-09 22:35
I used to select MIT primarily to keep my name associated with the code. The idea being if companies picked up my projects and used them in their products, it would be a good thing to have on my resume, and could land me a job. I’m at a very difficult point in my career now, and the days of this xkcd are probably coming to an end. Nobody wants to use libraries anymore, they just vibe-code their own. Now I’m reconsidering publishing my personal project source code at all, because I’ve rarely got contributions, and lets be real, a non-commercial license won’t stop the code being stolen anyway.
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@sudoer777@lemmy.ml 2026-11-10 05:44
I use it for code that’s so specific to my use cases that I don’t want to think about licensing bullshit nor care what anyone else does with it. But for more general purpose code I would use a copyleft license of some sort.