@drewdevault I cant tell you how many times people released their innovated idea under a copy-left license only to be angered when they realized the consequences, the vital nature, and the lock-in that resulted. Many abandoned the project and had to start over...

To each their own, but I will never use a copyleft license again.

@freemo oh no, it prevented you from making proprietary software, what a tragedy...

@drewdevault No, I didnt say anything about proprietary software. And it allows for that just fine.

@freemo that's literally the only thing that vitality prevents

@drewdevault

I assume you mean "virality".. and no, it prevents quite a bit else.. for example it prevents switching or in some cases even using other copy-left licenses. It is also well known for not working well along side other open-source licenses in general.

There have been countless open-source projects that had to be abandoned and restarted from scratch due to the virality of a copyleft license that prevented progress regarding open-source interests due to licensing conflicts.

@drewdevault

X.org server I think was the one that had to be abandoned, or was it XFree86.. one of the major X11 implementations had to be completely abandoned and rewritten as whatever replaced it.

@drewdevault

It literally did, though as pointed out by another commenter it didnt require a complete rewrite only partial, but did require a complet reorg and rename.

@drewdevault@fosstodon.org any idea people stand to gain by just lying about trivial shit like this guy? like what profit is there in just being this wrong on the internet out loud, I wonder

I mean I prefer the MIT license personally but I've never felt the need to just invent shit to defend it, much less shit that is quick and easy to look up and identify as bullshit. What's the goal here, I wonder?

@khm

Here is a quote from wikipedia basically agreeing with what I said word for word.

The newer terms are referred to as the XFree86 License 1.1. Many projects relying on XFree86 found the new license unacceptable, and the Free Software Foundation considers it incompatible with the version 2 of the GNU General Public License, though compatible with version 3.

@drewdevault

@freemo

The part you left out of the quote:

> Versions of XFree86 up to and including some release candidates for 4.4.0 were under the MIT License, a permissive, non-copyleft free software license. In February 2004, XFree86 4.4 was released with a change to the XFree86 license, by adding a credit clause,[23] similar to that in the original BSD license,[24] but broader in scope.

The old license wasn't copyleft. Copyleft didn't cause the fork.

@khm @drewdevault
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@rakoo

That is correct, it is the other copyleft licenses in the eco system whose viral nature and incompatibility with the clause that caused the issue.

@drewdevault @khm

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