DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On Sunday, 30 June 2013 at 19:45:06 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> OK, glad to hear that you wouldn't be against it.  You'd be 
> surprised how many who use permissive licenses still go nuts 
> when you propose to do exactly what the license allows, ie 
> close up parts of the source.

Because people don't just care about the strict legal 
constraints, but also about the social compact around software.

Often people choose permissive licenses because they want to 
ensure other free software authors can use their software without 
encountering the licensing incompatibilities that can result from 
the various forms of copyleft.  Closing up their software is 
rightly seen as an abuse of their goodwill.

In other cases there may be a broad community consensus that 
builds up around a piece of software, that this work should be 
shared and contributed to as a common good (e.g. X.org).  
Attempts to close it up violate those social norms and are 
rightly seen as an attack on that community and the valuable 
commons they have cultivated.

Community anger against legal but antisocial behaviour is hardly 
limited to software, and is a fairly important mechanism for 
ensuring that people behave well towards one another.

> Since you have been so gracious to use such permissive licenses 
> for almost all of D, I'm sure someone will try the closed/paid 
> experiment someday and see if which of us is right. :)

Good luck with that :-)

By the way, you mentioned a project of your own where you 
employed the short-term open core model you describe.  Want to 
tell us more about that?  Regardless of differences of opinion, 
it's always good to hear about someone's particular experience 
with a project.