Instead, millions of developers now gift corporations their work by releasing everything under MIT or Apache, and those corporations take from that treasure trove what they want and give back what they want, which is very often nothing.
Occasionally, EA for example, a big corp will donate some money to. Apple has created PRS to add support for Vision Pro.
If Godot was GPL it would be useless for most commercial game devs.
GitHub could only exist because it was built on top of git, which is also GPL licensed. This is not the only example but should be the immediate one since nearly a vast majority of devs touch git on a daily basis.
Maybe stop listening to your legal team and actually think for a moment. GPL doesn't prevent commercialization, what it does is make sure everyone contributes to the same project equally. Shocker, corporations do not want to contribute to the common good they want to rat fuck it into submission for profit.
The Godot foundation picked MIT for a good reason. If your legal team says no GPL then no GPL. This has been standard practice for decades.
The changes you make to a game engine are almost never the important part of your game's IP.
I guess you could sell the game ready to play, and then upload its source code without needed assets somewhere else.
Most companies aren’t going to be ok with this.
I know when I write a project, I just MIT license it. If some of the code I wrote helps you get your job done, go for it.
Many die on the hill of "developing something required for free with permissive licenses for recognition which will help with their future endeavors", which is the same with other creative lines of work. As a result they are milked of their knowledge and forced to bear the burden of leading the project and handling the community while companies just use what's developed while quietly but strongly nudging the project's direction for their benefit.
If the developer gets rogue, the thing is forked and sometimes closed down with no downside to the company, but the community and the developer(s) are hung to dry, conveniently signaling other developers about what they might face if they disobey their overlords with iron fists in velvet gloves as a secondary effect.
Last but not the least, many people are very ill-informed about GPL and how it works. I experience this when we discuss this with peers.
This is why I only use copyleft (or non-commercial/share-alike) licenses on what I build/produce/put out.
They mostly do not.
They only demand that you offer the source code to anyone that asks for it if you also distribute any kind of executable (you may even charge to cover the costs of the distribution).
The AGPL expands this to SaaS's too to close that loophole.
https://httpd.apache.org/ABOUT_APACHE.html
> We realize that it is often seen as an economic advantage for one company to "own" a market - in the software industry, that means to control tightly a particular conduit such that all others must pay for its use. This is typically done by "owning" the protocols through which companies conduct business, at the expense of all those other companies. To the extent that the protocols of the World Wide Web remain "unowned" by a single company, the Web will remain a level playing field for companies large and small. Thus, "ownership" of the protocols must be prevented.
I always advice aspiring open source enthusiasts to stay far, far away from the Linux Foundation. It has become a barrier to software freedom these days, rather than an enabler.
Keep in mind I am not a coder/engineer, I’m just kind of a tourist in that world, so if I can do it it’s clearly very achievable for many people.
No reason to throw up your hands in defeat. We don’t need everyone to shift over everything. We just need to make sure there’s always space and demand for open source software to keep it alive.
I barely have to do it, but imho, this is how software should work and what running a computer should feel like.
Gnome and Systemd is a fine example of how fucked up this can get.
You can always find bad examples. The good news is there’s still lots of good ones out there right now. No point in being defeatist about it, just do what you can
> Keep in mind I am not a coder/engineer
How do you control and audit something you don’t understand? What specific steps are you taking?
Wouldn’t you say that’s way better than the status quo with windows/macOS?
Defeatism says otherwise!
> Over the long run, humanity has a pretty good record, carried by the people who refuse to give up.
Unfortunately when the struggle is against other people, especially the incumbent powers-that-be (in this case the capitalist overlords), those that refuse to give up have to fight long and hard to get enough other properly in the fight, and victory requires something drastic like at very least mass protests perhaps up to civil war level.
I prefer easy.
If you prefer difficult, more power to you.
Not every airport is a huge commercial building with hundreds of people (also, you wouldn’t visit one of those to parachute jump). Some are akin to cozy shacks without a lot of traffic where you’re in and out in no time.
Clearly you don’t feel that strongly about it. You know what would’ve been easier than making an account just to post that comment? Not doing that.
Have you also stopped working, paying your bills, showering, eating, interacting with other people? Not doing any of that is easier than doing it.