by its_magic | 2026-02-03 22:17:24+00:00
> You depend on lawyers either way, whichever license you use

No, in fact I don't. Indeed, I go far out of my way to avoid these parasites entirely, and anyone who depends on them. I don't give a damn what anyone does with my software. I don't need the attorneys to do anything.

For accusing me of "misinterpreting" what you wrote, you seem to be quite confused yourself. What part of "public domain" don't you understand? The means I don't give a shit what you do with the code. You can decide for yourself. You know, the mature, unselfish approach. Busybodies and control freaks hate this one simple trick.

> Regarding freedoms, let us take this scenario.

Here we go, lol. We're headed down the rabbit hole straight to the juicy caramel center of your flawed thinking.

> Your small company depend on a complex bsd library thats hard to replicate. It gets the attention of a much larger company, they fork it make various changes to make it much better and keep it closed, their product kills yours.

Sounds like you had a very poor business model. Probably because you have no idea what you're doing. Your monetization strategy failed. Pick yourself back up and try again.

The solution is not Big Brother and his machine guns to force others to comply with your dictates. (i.e. the lawyers and legal system, if I have to spell it out for you.)

> While, if it was GPL (or AGPL as its needed today)

AGPL is strongly avoided by almost everyone, for good reason. It's even more of a cancer than the GPL.

> the company either has to redevelop it inhouse if they wish to serve it as product to the public without releasing its sources, or they do the same thing as in the bsd case, they make a much improved version...and you have equal access to the same sources, you can take that and pivot upon it instead of your company dying.

...or they just decide to develop their own version from scratch instead, keep it closed source from day one, and you get nothing at all. Happens all the time.

If you were truly a shit-hot developer you would not be concerned about anyone ripping you off. You'd know you're so creative and putting out so much quality effort on a consistent basis that you'd never worry about being surpassed by anyone.

Big company thought of a good idea to add to your big pile of good ideas? No problem. Copy that and come out with another good idea or two for him to steal. If they're always imitating you, then that means you're the industry leader, doesn't it?

If you're not the industry leader however, because you really only had one good idea and Big Company has more, then what right do you have to try and Stop Progress just for your own selfish ends? That's what this all boils down to: selfishness, due to insecurity.

Your mentality is completely foreign to a true winner, but oh-so-common among the insecure midwits. They're always deathly afraid that their One Thing will get ripped off and they will be left with nothing.

It's a scarcity mentality. That's the problem. It's all in your head.

You're a squirrel with one little nut that you cling to desperately, in hopes that nobody else will grab it. You make all your life about protecting that nut at all costs. You're so glad that Big Brother offers you his machine guns to help you protect it. You don't care about the harm that comes from bringing thugs with guns into the picture to push people around. You're just desperate to protect Your Thing, so you will accept anything that you believe will help this end. It's the same broken mentality that manifests itself everywhere else besides software also. Nothing new under the sun.

Do not pretend that I don't understand you far better than you know yourself, or that I am misinterpreting you in some way. I've seen ten thousand of your type if I've seen one. You're everywhere, especially on HN. I'm well aware of what your mentality is. The root of the problem is your insecurity.

> Its very simple, more or less mathematical game theory.

You don't have a clue about how economics actually works--which is typical for those of your loudly expressed opinions. But you think of yourself as some enlightened game theorist. Not quite.

The bottom line is, you can't FORCE people to behave how you want through your favorite legal fiction or any other, and you damn sure should never try, as it's a fool's errand that only leads to tears. One of the basic laws of the universe.

The people who created GPL knew this from day 1. That's exactly why they created it to be the way it is. Irt was an act of sabotage. This knowledge is currently far above your level however, and is likely to remain so for a long time to come; probably forever.

The world is not falling and BSD is winning the license war for good reason. End of discussion. It's all over but your crying.