MIT is the most popular Open Source Permissive license. It’s permissive vs Copyleft like the GPL, meaning it doesn’t require the same license to modifications/forks. That means new contributions to MIT licensed code can be made closed source at any time, which is why it’s so popular in the Silicon Valley corporate Open Source space.
Companies love having the ability to start out Open Source so that can rapidly develop and get free code contributions from the community, then when their application gets super popular and deeply integrated, they change the license to something more restrictive to lock in customers/vendors/users and start getting more money.
That’s why some folks in the FOSS community don’t like it. It’s still better than straight up proprietary licenses, because the old MIT version can still be forked and remain open if there is a large enough community around it, (this happened a few years ago with Terraform and Open Tofu). Best though to just start out with a Copyleft license like the GPL.
There are valid reasons to use an MIT license. Why do you care how someone else licenses their own code?
Write your own code and license it how you prefer.
GPL was designed as a virus to end the existence or viability of copyright law. I do appreciate the idea, and plenty of my code is licensed as GPL or comparable copyleft license. Also, plenty of my code is licensed under more permissive licenses, as that is sometimes more appropriate for that code to be useful.
Do I care someone makes money out of code originating from what I wrote? I do not. Do I care whether they give me their modifications to such code? I do not.
No reason to hate on MIT license. It has its uses.
MIT makes sense in a Capitalist world where corpos want all the advantages of FOSS without having to give up the massive amounts of money generated and protected by IP laws.
Copyleft licensing scares them away, and anything that scares mega-corps away is probably good.
Don’t get me wrong, MIT is still better than proprietary licensing, but not as good as strong Copyleft licensing like the GPL.
I bet you can’t elaborate
I’ll bet I can.
Do you fancy giving it a go for an uneducated potato such as myself? Never heard of the MIT license hate before.
MIT is the most popular Open Source Permissive license. It’s permissive vs Copyleft like the GPL, meaning it doesn’t require the same license to modifications/forks. That means new contributions to MIT licensed code can be made closed source at any time, which is why it’s so popular in the Silicon Valley corporate Open Source space.
Companies love having the ability to start out Open Source so that can rapidly develop and get free code contributions from the community, then when their application gets super popular and deeply integrated, they change the license to something more restrictive to lock in customers/vendors/users and start getting more money.
That’s why some folks in the FOSS community don’t like it. It’s still better than straight up proprietary licenses, because the old MIT version can still be forked and remain open if there is a large enough community around it, (this happened a few years ago with Terraform and Open Tofu). Best though to just start out with a Copyleft license like the GPL.
There are valid reasons to use an MIT license. Why do you care how someone else licenses their own code? Write your own code and license it how you prefer.
GPL was designed as a virus to end the existence or viability of copyright law. I do appreciate the idea, and plenty of my code is licensed as GPL or comparable copyleft license. Also, plenty of my code is licensed under more permissive licenses, as that is sometimes more appropriate for that code to be useful.
Do I care someone makes money out of code originating from what I wrote? I do not. Do I care whether they give me their modifications to such code? I do not.
No reason to hate on MIT license. It has its uses.
MIT makes sense in a Capitalist world where corpos want all the advantages of FOSS without having to give up the massive amounts of money generated and protected by IP laws.
Copyleft licensing scares them away, and anything that scares mega-corps away is probably good.
Don’t get me wrong, MIT is still better than proprietary licensing, but not as good as strong Copyleft licensing like the GPL.
There are occasions in which you do want your software to be easily adopted by large corporations.