Context:
Permissive licenses (commonly referred to as “cuck licenses”) like the MIT license allow others to modify your software and release it under an unfree license. Copyleft licenses (like the Gnu General Public License) mandate that all derivative works remain free.
Andrew Tanenbaum developed MINIX, a modular operating system kernel. Intel went ahead and used it to build Management Engine, arguably one of the most widespread and invasive pieces of malware in the world, without even as much as telling him. There’s nothing Tanenbaum could do, since the MIT license allows this.
Erik Andersen is one of the developers of Busybox, a minimal implementation of that’s suited for embedded systems. Many companies tried to steal his code and distribute it with their unfree products, but since it’s protected under the GPL, Busybox developers were able to sue them and gain some money in the process.
Interestingly enough, Tanenbaum doesn’t seem to mind what intel did. But there are some examples out there of people regretting releasing their work under a permissive license.
The two licenses have distinct use cases, and only overlap for some definitions of “free” software. I also think both the comic artist and OP set up a fallacious argument. I’ll add that in no way do I support Intel’s shenanigans here.
The comic author takes one specific case of an MIT licensed product being used in a commercial product, and pits it against another GPL product. This ignores situations where MIT is the right answer, where GPL is the wrong one, situations where legal action on GPL violations has failed, and all cases where the author’s intent is considered (Tanenbaum doesn’t mind). From that I conclude that this falls under The Cherry Picking Fallacy. While humorous, it’s a really bad argument.
But don’t take it from me, learn from the master of logic himself.
This sentiment makes the enclosing sentence an Ad-hominem fallacy, by attacking the would-be MIT license party as having poor morals and/or low social standing. Permissive licenses absolutely do allow others to modify code without limit, but that is suggested to be a bad thing on moral grounds alone. That said, I’d love to see a citation here because that’s the first I’ve heard of this pejorative used to describe software licensing.
I was surprised that comment this got so many upvotes, so I’ll respond by saying that, with all due respect, I think your argument is much more fallacious than the one you are trying to debunk.
Yes, this is called an example. In this case, the author is using a particularly egregious case to make a broader conclusion: namely that if you release software under a “do whatever you want” license, it may come back to bite you in the future when it’s used in a product that you don’t like.
This comic is a warning to developers that choosing MIT/BSD without understanding this fact is a bad choice.
It does not ignore those situations. All situations are multifaceted and need to take multiple considerations into account. The author is trying to argue that people should take care not to overlook the particular one to which he is trying to draw attention.
Just because legal efforts have failed does not mean that they are not worthwhile. There may be many cases where people avoided misappropriating GPL software because they did not want to deal with the license - there may be cases where people were less hesitant about doing so with MIT/BSD because they knew this risk was not there.
Just because the author used a single example does not preclude the existence of others. That is a much more fallacious assumption that invalidates much of your argument.
Just because Tanenbaum didn’t mind does not mean that other developers who mistakenly use MIT/BSD will not either. Also, it honestly shouldn’t matter what Tanenbaum thinks because we don’t know what his rationale is. Maybe he thinks malware is a good thing or that IME is not a serious issue - if that’s the case, do we still consider his sentiments relevant?
It does not, in fact. Just because the author used a slang/slanderous term to describe the licenses he doesn’t like does not mean that his logical arguments are invalid. Ad-hominem fallacies are when you say “the person who argued that is $X, therefore his logic is invalid”, not when he uses a term that may be considered in poor taste.
Misrepresentation. The author is not arguing that they have poor morals, he is arguing that they are short-sighted and possibly naive with regards to the implications of choosing MIT/BSD.
My conclusion: I appreciate the author for making this post. People should be more aware of the fact that your software could be used for nefarious purposes.
So unless you really don’t care about enabling evil people, you should be defaulting to using GPL. If people really want to use your copyleft software in a proprietary way, then it is easily within their means (and resources) to get an exemption from you. The fact that there is so much non-GPL software out there makes the GPL itself weaker and makes it easier for nefarious interests to operate freely.
(Not that I would ever release software under GPL myself. I think software licenses are stupid. But no license basically has the same non-derivative limitation as GPL so it doesn’t matter as far as I’m aware.)
I’d like to counter both these arguments with:
I think you’re ignoring that most people wouldn’t want their code used like that. Just because the author doesn’t mind doesn’t make that typical. Look at Mongo and Elastic. They felt the need to use an arguably non-free license for their code because of perceived abuses. AppGet is another example of something similar.
That’s why you should read and understand a license before choosing it. MIT license is just a couple of lines of easy language, so it’s not like you need a degree to understand basic English. Anybody who’s surprised by the contents of the MIT license has no sympathy from me. Reading the text requires no more than one minute of time.
People generally aren’t surprised by the effects of the MIT license, they’re surprised by the behavior of other humans. Less permissive licenses protect against that.
Wait, people give other people the right to make proprietary variants of released source code and then are surprised when they exercise that right?
No, other licenses don’t protect against not understanding which rights are granted. The GPL, for example, allows to make proprietary web services using GPL code and to never release any modifications to that code. Many people were very surprised many years ago that some web-based messenger could use Pidgin’s libpurple to connect to ICQ etc. without ever giving anything back.
It’s more like being angry when people try to abuse charities and get money when they don’t need it. Like growing an apple tree in your yard and telling people they’re free then being upset when someone comes and takes all of them. Or a better example, being angry about people taking all the candy from a Halloween bowl.
That’s not what I meant, I meant protect against people taking advantage of your code in a way most people would view as wrong. (Just because something isegal doesn’t mean people believe it is right.)
Also, that’s why I use AGPL.
Dude are you a bot?