I would understand if Canonical want a new cow to milk, but why are developers even agreeing to this? Are they out of their minds?? Do they actually want companies to steal their code? Or is this some reverse-uno move I don’t see yet? I cannot fathom any FOSS project not using the AGPL anymore. It’s like they’re painting their faces with “here, take my stuff and don’t contribute anything back, that’s totally fine”

  • SavvyWolf@pawb.socialEnglish
    0·
    10 days ago

    here, take my stuff and don’t contribute anything back, that’s totally fine

    I mean, yeah? They are probably fine with that and think that software should be distributed without restrictions. You may not agree with it, but it’s their choice. Not really stealing if they give it away willingly.

    I cannot fathom any FOSS project not using the AGPL anymore.

    I mean, most of them that want to use a GPL-like license use the GPL or LGPL rather than the AGPL. :P

    why are developers even agreeing to this?

    Are they? Last I checked this wasn’t as much of a plan as much of it was just a developer thinking out loud. And even if it was a real plan, developers should continue doing what they should be doing anyway: Write their scripts without any GNU/uutils/whatever-microsoft-calls-their-evil-uutils-fork extensions. Then their scripts could run across all platforms, including GNU, uutils, FreeBSD and BusyBox.

    At any rate, if Microsoft really wanted to make their own coreutils fork (if they haven’t already), they’re not really that complicated tools. They could devote like maybe a year of engineering time and get it pretty much compatible.

    • marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      Write their scripts without any GNU/uutils/whatever-microsoft-calls-their-evil-uutils-fork extensions. Then their scripts could run across all platforms, including GNU, uutils, FreeBSD and BusyBox

      Sorry but that’s besides the point. If improvements to coreutils are not published and upstreamed then the community loses out on potential improvements that trained personnel at a successful company make. Not being dependent on such utils is a different discussion and doesn’t solve the core issue.

      Yeah I’d like for them to use AGPL but even GPLv3 or it’s derivatives are fine as long as they emphasise FOSS

      • SavvyWolf@pawb.socialEnglish
        0·
        10 days ago

        What improvements are you thinking of? I can see that reasoning with something like the Linux kernel where there’s a lot of complex and integrated code, but ultimately individual coreutils commands are really simple. There’s very little you can do to extend something like ls… And if you do, you can just make your own superls command and not have to deal with any licensing restrictions.

        With regards to AGPL vs GPL, none of the coreutils programs have network connectivity, so I’m not sure what the network requirement actually adds?

        • marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
          0·
          10 days ago

          Again, it’s not about the actual programs being simple. Just because they are simple in usage doesn’t mean they should be encouraged to use a license that harms FOSS development. If we allow these “simple” utilities now, it sets the dangerous precedent for companies to push towards more software with such licenses and swipe FOSS advancements without contributing anything back. Corporations which do not contribute back to the FOSS community do not deserve to take anything from the community either.

          Unfortunately, I alone am powerless to implement such measures when a large group of software developers decide to not take this into account when writing software.

          I selected AGPL because I find it to be a little more strict compared to GPL. Any derivative of GPL is fine as long as it promotes open source development