The decision to use the MIT License is not without its critics [LWN.net]

The decision to use the MIT License is not without its critics

Posted Jun 14, 2021 17:19 UTC (Mon) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334)
In reply to: The decision to use the MIT License is not without its critics by Wol
Parent article: Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

> Well, the project I keep on planning to write :-) will probably be licenced GPL2+.

Well, it doesn't make any sense to me. Why the plus? Either you are against GPL3, and then you want GPL2-only, or you don't care and then you go for GPL3. GPL2+ doesn't make much sense in this day and age.

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The decision to use the MIT License is not without its critics

Posted Jun 15, 2021 19:00 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Maybe you like v3 but don't want to stop v2-only projects from using you?

The decision to use the MIT License is not without its critics

Posted Jun 15, 2021 19:59 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually, I hate all this *patent* licence crap in what's supposed to be a *copyright* licence.

That's what I don't like about GPL3, although I understand why they put it in. Although I'm hoping that the Google/Oracle spat has helped clarify the fact that if it's copyrightable it's not patentable ... :-) At present I believe software is unique in that the lawyers would like you to believe it's both?

But GPL3 also has significant bugfixes to GPL2 - bugs that bite badly in an internet era. So GPL2+ suits me fine.

Cheers,
Wol

The decision to use the MIT License is not without its critics

Posted Jun 16, 2021 1:17 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> Although I'm hoping that the Google/Oracle spat has helped clarify the fact that if it's copyrightable it's not patentable

I don't think the case did that at all. Google won on fair use grounds which is reusable by precisely no one except as a benchmark to compare their reuse against. The patent claims were, IIRC, thrown out early, but kept it on the federal circuit because patent claims automatically go there.