Brendan Abel wrote:
While I think most of the disagreement in this long thread results
from different beliefs in what "freedom" means, I wanted to add, that
most of the responses that argue that the MIT license permits the user
more freedom than the GPL, suffer from the broken window fallacy.
This fallacy results from the short-sided-ness of the user base, as it
is only considering the first generation of derivative works.
I agree, that under an MIT license, the first generation of derivative
works have more freedom. But any extra freedom gained here comes at
the direct expense of all future generations of derivative software.
You are assuming that _all_ future generations become propriety, then?
How pessimistic.
Under a GPL license, it is true that the first generation will have
less freedom to distribute their software as they would like. But it
also ensures that all subsequent generations of derivative works have
the freedom to access all previous derivative works.
Just because you have the code for the _current_ version of something,
doesn't mean you have the code for that something three versions ago...
after all, it may have been modified.
~Ethan~
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