This year I decided to switch my “default license” to EUPL-1.2. This is an OSI-approved free software license created and published by the European Union. And it is quite a divergence from the licenses I’ve used in the past. EUPL is a strong copyleft license that closes the “SaaS loophole” by requiring reciprocal licensing regardless of how the software is distributed.

Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along.

We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires.

And so it is time to stop messing about with permissive licenses. If corporations don’t want to use our software under our terms, they are free to spend the effort or tokens to build their own.

  • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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    5 hours ago

    The EUPL seems to permit relicensing under several licenses, including LGPL, which seems like a massive loophole.

    • onlinepersona@programming.dev
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      5 hours ago

      Why? You can only relicense the code you wrote, right? It’s not like somebody can take an EUPL licensed project and go “this is now MIT” and use it as they like or close source it.

      • deadcream@sopuli.xyz
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        3 hours ago

        I think you can allow others to relicense your code, that’s what permissive licenses effectively do.

        EUPL does not seem to do that however. It only lists other copyleft licenses that are compatible with it (IDK why it’s done this way).

      • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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        3 hours ago

        If the Licensee Distributes or Communicates Derivative Works or copies thereof based upon both the Work and another work licensed under a Compatible Licence, this Distribution or Communication can be done under the terms of this Compatible Licence.

        https://eupl.eu/1.2/en/