#mpl is better than lgpl

[cinnamonwolfy]

i have some criticisms for the gnu project

like, a lot of criticisms. there's so many things they do so wrong and are so questionable, it's not even funny. then again, stallman still is part of the foundation, and stallmanisn is suuuper contagious (even i had it for a bit, luckily @raisinware was there to deradicalize me before it was too late <3 <3 <3)

i have a lot to say, but i will just put the top 3 things wrong with gnu and the fsf in this post

so let's start with one of the lesser ones, lgpl. in theory, lgpl should be a lot less restrictive and easier for companies to follow without being forced to open-source their code (i know that for a lot of foss devs that this is a hard pill to swallow, but some software is best left to be closed-source. not everything needs to be foss, and for most commercial software projects, it would be detrimental to have such stuff open-source). well, the lgpl is just the gpl with a shared linking exception, basically making it kinda useless. the lgpl really should've been a stricter mpl-like license. mpl just makes more sense for libraries than gpl does, and making lgpl almost fully compatible with mpl would've helped a lot with mpl-gpl interop. sadly, lgpl is still gpl for the most part, which means that barely anyone uses it (at least compared to gpl)

one of the bigger gripes i have with the gnu project is autotools. i'm not gonna sugarcoat it, autotools is garbage. it generates so much stuff that goes unused due to it being legacy cruft from other proprietary unix clones, and it's a biggger pain in the rear than cmake to set up a project with it and actually make it compile something. i guess it works nicely for compiling software on legacy unix systems, but gnu is not really legacy, as it keeps getting updated. and with how many gnu extensions they already do with their software to the point where there's software that depends on gcc to compile at all, you would assume that they would get rid of all of the legacy cruft that nobody really uses anymore (unless you're runinng it on aix, in which case, you'd go with an older version anyway). this is why a lot of my projects use their own custom autotools-like build system alongside meson, so that way i can accomplish cross-platform compilation while also supporting old unix systems via the posix shell scripts

and now, my biggest problem with gnu: their complete obsession over c90, despite c99 existing and being hundreds of time better (and that's before you consider c11, which is already out of date, and rust). gnu still believes that current year is 1991, and thus still uses c89/c90 in a lot of their projects (which is why their projects are so messy), even projects such as gnulib, which even though it already requires c99, they still write a lot of the library in c90 and even deliberately just avoid using c99 for no reason known to science. i swear, they act like rust programmers do, but instead of a nice and modern language that deserves that attention, it's an ancient piece of crap that nobody except them likes using, that has been replaced by newer versions of the c language and even rust

anyways, that's enough complaining for one post (i did just write a nyt bestselling book above x3). it was nice to release some of the stuff i've had to deal with while creating and maintaining portalinux with my gf. i have more stuff about gnu and the fsf to complain about, but that would be too long, even for tumblr standards x3. so i will probably end up making a video of it on my yt channel whenever i feel comfortable enough with my voice to post :3. if you made it this far, thank you for putting up with so much text, i just really needed to let some steam off :3

i wish you all a good day (or night) :3

[hippocl5966-blog]

FOSS Licenses

I’ve been being worried about rights of FOSS since I know FOSS’s definitions from the beginning of the semester. I feel like it is so hard to determine the rights of each one since users, developers, founder all contribute to a single piece project. However, after reading the articles of FOSS licenses, it gives me a clearer view of what license means. It's nothing like giving away all your rights but releasing permissions of using it to work and protects you as creator.

However, there are more conflicts occurs about licenses than other topics related to FOSS projects. For example, I was a lot confused about copyrights and patent. Copyright protects your exact piece of work, but patent projects your thoughts/ideas of inventing. There is also a major difference between commercial and proprietary like commercially is for gaining profits and proprietary is for use of project within a group. 

The licenses seem clearer now, but the real issues are much more complicated in the real world.The facebook’s transfer from Apache to BSD+Patent is an interesting example desires more attention. Considering that Facebook is a large company which much other malicious ones might gain profits by having the lawsuits with Facebook. Then for better and faster developement, Facebook regulate their all sub-software with the license that if anyone sues Facebook for infringement, then they will lose patents of all Facebook software for convenience by reducing sueball. This standard conflicts with the Apache Foundation, who promotes less restriction for FOSS projects. Thus, Apache does not need to list Facebook in their “Category X” while they are using Facebook products. 

From Facebook’s case, we can see that the incompatibility plays an essential role in licensing. Thus, there are several relicensing examples in FOSS caused by the incompatibility between licenses. Many example softwares are what we are familiar with, like Firefox. Mozilla transfer FireFox from 

FSF and OSI for being incompatible......Netscape Public License (including code by other contributors) to an MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/LGPL 2.1 tri-license, thus achieving GPL-compatibility.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_relicensing#Cases)

Also, VLC is a FOSS media player.

The VLC project also has a complicated license history due to license compatibility: in 2007 it decided for license compatibility reasons to not upgrade to the just released GPLv3.[13] After the VLC was removed from Apple App Store at the beginning of 2011, in October 2011 the VLC project re-licensed the VLC library part from the GPLv2 to the LGPLv2 to achieve better compatibility.[14][15] In July 2013 the VLC application could then be resubmitted to the iOS App Store relicensed under the Mozilla Public License

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_relicensing#Cases)

The licenses can be studied more with the discussion between FOSS and philosophy.