FOSS programmers, what do you think of horrible people using your software? (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I just learned that Nmap is almost GPL except that they revoked the license specifically for SCO group for their SCO–Linux disputes.

This got me thinking, what do open source programmers think of evil companies or horrible people using their software?

Don't get me wrong, FOSS software by its nature can't be controlled or strictly prevented of being used. But in case of companies like SCO, that is a thing that at least can cause them headache and they risk getting into legal trouble. A programmer for example can modify GPL to make so that his software can't be used by Microsoft or Facebook, but it is GPL for everybody else.

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[-] [email protected] 28 points 5 days ago

I still haven't released anything which is not under the AGPLv3 license, which is even more aggressive than the GPL, primarily because I know that it's prohibited to use AGPL-licensed software/libraries at Google.

I'm also hoping that because my stuff is on Codeberg, not GitHub, that its license hasn't been laundered yet by some criminal AI company, but I don't actually believe so. Certainly makes me more reluctant to publish my code.

this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024

88 points (97.8% liked)

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