I ask this because I think of the recent switch of Ubuntu to the Rust recode of the GNU core utils, which use an MIT license. There are many Rust recodes of GPL software that re-license it as a pushover MIT or Apache licenses. I worry these relicensing efforts this will significantly harm the FOSS ecosystem. Is this reason to start worrying or is it not that bad?

IMO, if the FOSS world makes something public, with extensive liberties, then the only thing that should be asked in return is that people preserve these liberties, like the GPL successfully enforces. These pushover licenses preserve nothing.

    • eleijeep@piefed.socialEnglish
      4·
      2 hours ago

      what licence can we use to force any entity using a library to make their project open-source

      GPL requires this, since linking with a library is considered a derivative work even if the library is dynamically loaded.

      This is why the LGPL exists, which makes the library copyleft but does not extend the derivative work classification to programs linking with the library.

    • TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 hours ago

      None. The closest you can get is the AGPLv3.

      If you go further, it will no longer be open source. This is the case for the Server Side Public License (SSPL) for example. It requires the entire system configuration to be released under the same license*. This sounds “open source friendly” but it’s actually just a proprietary license because it’s not realistically possible to legally comply with it. You cannot run standard hardware without proprietary firmware, which means you cannot run SSPLed software on it legally.

      *This only applies if you host the software as a service but the result is the same. It basically violates the freedom to use the work for any purpose.

    • nous@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      2 hours ago

      I don’t think there is a good license for that. The ones MongoDB used turned the open source community against them. But that is not really my point. I just mean that some projects using MIT won’t suddenly mean every company will start stealing and closing that software. Some things like coreutils and sudo just don’t have the commercial value to make that worth the effort. So there is no real need to worry about these two projects IMO. Other projects are a different story altogether though. Each project needs to make its own decision on what licence best suits it. The GPL is not the one and only license that is worth using.

      • bruce965@lemmy.ml
        1·
        2 hours ago

        I would say AGPL is the “safest” license still approved by the OSI. Could you share your opinion?