Do you think it is more likely to scare your potential paying customers, your potential contributors, or potential freeloaders?

I expect that is likely to scare people in this order:

1. Freeloaders

2. Contributors

3. Customers

If I have a Free Software project, I want to scare freeloaders while still welcoming potential customers and contributors. I know its a balancing act, but I like the AGPL.

I don't think that world should be licensed with A/GPL all over, but I don't think A/GPL is the second coming of Evil, either.

I like the virality and values which GPL family of licenses stand for, and I personally support them. I license all of my software with GPL, and open source it like that. Why? I don't my code, intended to be open and free for everyone, to be modified and locked up for somewhere for profit, that's all. In other words, if I put out something on my free time, for leisure, I want it to be free for everyone.

For profit work is different. I'm not a fan of capitalism, but I'm not an anticapitalist zealot either. I'd license my work with most permissive license the circumstances allow, and try to open source it with all the power I have, but it's not always feasible, I know. So it can be Apache/MIT, whatever in that circumstances.

So, that's my point of view. Horses for courses, and I refuse to give my honest/hobby work to someone just because it's convenient for someone to integrate it to something closed source or for profit, regardless of usefulness/quality of the software.

C'mon... It improves memory safety!

I agree with GPL being a way to protect the investment in the commons so it remains "freer" than with MIT/BSD licensed code. But in the cloud platform world this is has show to be not so helpful (hence we need the AGPL). Both GPL and AGPL are (AGPL more so) shunned by big biz: this is a blessing (fuck 'm) and a curse (they have much money to invest).

All open source releases are extending the commons (freely available to everyone), so if MIT/BSD code is released I still cheer for that (even if it clones GPL code).

GPLv3 plus a commercial license will go a long way toward that.

I believe this is a plus point of GPLv3 (although more of a side-effect than a goal). I cheer for companies like Artifex which develops Ghostscript. It makes sense to me that if you're not willing to pay forward, you must pay back towards the cost of developing software.

But then, I've never had to make these hard choices so my naivety shows here.

Maybe that's the idea of GPL, but certainly not the reality. As long as it more enforcement won't help. But I'm still all for it. Makes sure companies fund better software with better licenses and the GPL ends in the garbage bin of history where it belongs.

For me it's very much the opposite, I refuse to contribute code to anything licensed under the MIT/BSD/etc family of languages.

It makes me sad to see so much confusion, incorrect information, naiveté and paranoia going around regarding the GPL that it's scaring people off. I think that most of these people would feel differently if they understood better.

I think the systematic defanging and watering down of the free software movement is a great loss.

This is not necessarily a good thing.

Lower adoption rate of GPL'd software means less freedom for the user.

I hope you're open to LGPL though. I don't think there's much reason to avoid linking, and a number of free software libraries allow that via LGPL. I've always view that version of the license as a terrific compromise.

I wouldn't say that GPL3 is "anti-capitalist". Rather, it's extremely pro-freedom and forces certain behavior on part of the capitalists that they aren't inclined to partake in on their own volition.

Is it really? I've recently switched to AGPL because I specifically don't want you using my stuff if you aren't going to give back. If you want to make money off something, feel free to pay for the initial investment, instead of using my work for free.

> Developers do not collectively or exclusively want to work for free and live a life of poverty.

Which is why I use the AGPL. If you want to make money off my work, pay me.

> Not to mention that the GPL is simply too risky and expensive to use in any commercial context.

Good! At this point, I'd be happier if everyone who wanted to contribut to OSS played in one sandbox, and everyone who just wanted to use OSS for gain without giving anything back went somewhere else.

Why do you hate them so much? Is it strictly as a developer, or as a user?

As a developer I've certainly felt constrained and annoyed by them at times, and I'm very glad there are alternative open source licenses available, but as a user I can't imagine a scenario where you would hate them. After all, the freedom they guarantee is to the user, not the developer.

Even as a developer though, the family has it's place. I don't think Linux would be a thing had it had a more "permissive" license. That GPL is what forces the big corps to contribute their improvements back. If not for the GPL, I think it would be in a position similar to that of BSD, and the majority of users would have no choice but to use a proprietary OS

So? I see this as a good thing.

It's not like there is a shortage of BSD, MIT, Apache, et al., licensed code.

GPL code should be treated like radioactive or toxic material--you need a permit, legal approval, and you had better have a REALLY good reason. There are reasons why you might need to use it, but they should be few and very far between.

On the contrary: the GPL is meant to PROTECT developers from patent trolls and freeloaders who what to turn FOSS into unpaid labor.

It also protect users, and all developers are also users.

I think much of this comes from the atmosphere of fear that anti-GPL activists have managed to create around the GPL.

This is true for you, now. But that's not to say it does not increase freedom over time, over a couple of generations of software enhancements.

I actually read the AGPL as driven by mostly pragmatic factors. It didn't even come from the FSF initially, but from a developer (Affero) who believed it fit their business strategy better than the existing licenses.

One of the traditional business strategies built on the GPL, which RMS does not greatly like, but is quite possible to do, is the dual-licensed GPL/proprietary approach. People who are willing to GPL their own software may incorporate your code under the GPL's terms. Other people who prefer more traditional commercial terms can, alternately, purchase a commercial license.

In the webapp setting this approach no longer works, because the GPL only covers "distribution", and a webapp backend is never distributed. Therefore nobody will buy a commercial license. The AGPL more or less restores the traditional GPL terms in the webapp setting, where you have to GPL your product if you ship an app containing the GPL'd code: only now, deploying a public webapp is a form of "shipping" (which is how most software devs actually do see the situation... deploying a live webapp is a modern-day form of shipping software).

And in practice, it seems the most common alternative to the AGPL in this setting is to just keep your code fully proprietary, so competitors can't build on it. I think in that sense AGPL is helpful if it encourages more releases, e.g. if it encourages more companies to take the Launchpad approach with their code (AGPL) rather than the GitHub approach to it (proprietary). The other common alternative is to release the source but under a non-OSI license like "free for noncommercial use only, commercial users must buy a license". The AGPL seems at least more generous than that.

Part of that argument is just a few companies' fear of contributing anything back, not that the license is so wide.

But even assuming it is a nasty thing, no one will notice that if its nastiness isn't enforced.