As belts tighten, corporate #opensource evolves—further and further from the ideals of Free Software.
Partly due to bad actions by "freeloaders," but also companies putting too much value in building code, and not enough on community and support. https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hashicorp-adopts-business-source-license
I'm sure @bcantrill is could fill out a book now with examples of companies who are using parts of his "Corporate Open Source Anti-Patterns" presentation for a template...
Requiring copyright assignment, using anti-competitive licenses instead of open source...
@dango_ I'd tend to trust the FSF more than some other entities, but still not like the idea regardless.
@geerlingguy @dango_ One can trust the FSF not to use the copyright assignments to take a project closed source, but they can still use it to make unilateral licensing changes based on their own ideology.
They did it when the GPLv3 came out and, to me, it was a bad step.
The Linux kernel is the best example of why not being able to relicense the code is actually a good thing.
@bcantrill @geerlingguy @dango_
Why do you think you can trust the FSF? Sure today you can still trust them, but in 50 years they can be taken over by someone else with money who changes the license. GPLv4 might be just a little bad, then GPLv5 and GPLv6...
@bluGill @bcantrill @geerlingguy @dango_ I trust them not to go closed source, but I don't trust them not to go too far with their licensing (as I said).
I'd prefer if GNU projects had no copyright assignment whatsoever. Will that happen? Not likely.
If the FSF ever goes evil, there'll probably be early warning signs. And GPL code can't be retroactively relicensed in practice — it can, but only when distributing to new (and willing) recipients, turning the new license mute.