Re-licensing the project

After much deliberation and research, I have decided to put my foot down and stop using the GNU Public License (GPL) for future releases of MDU. I understand that the terms of the GPL explicitly state that derivative works must be GPL'd, but I'm consciously breaking the terms of the license. Starting with the next version of MDU (most likely 11.04), the script will be licensed under the much more free (as in freedom) MIT license.

If anyone has a problem with the re-licensing, I invite you to take a look at the comparitave lengths of each license. The MIT license reads, "you may do whatever you want with this code." The GPL reads, "you may do whatever you want with this code, provided it does not use any non-free libraries and the derivative works must be licensed under the GPL." Yikes.

6 comments:

disappoint said...

You are a fucking idiot, it's a good thing your project will never go anywhere because if it did, it'd be stolen by the likes of Apple and Microsoft and you'd feel like the massive retard you are.
Apologies for the language, but I am your friend. I fight for your freedom.

aveilleux said...

I'm sorry you feel that way. I don't feel sorry, however, for allowing the people who want to use my project for commercial purposes to do so. The MIT license requires attribution, and as this is a free project, that's all I really want and care about. I'm not surprised I attracted a GPL fanboy/troll, but whatever gets the pageviews I suppose.

Not to mention Lua, PuTTY, X11, and Expat, which are all highly successful projects that use the MIT license. It's not the end of the world if someone decides to use my work -- by all means, it's theirs to use. It's a shell script written in BASH. There are no binaries and the source is as readily available as your computer's text editor.

Maybe if you took the time to actually look at the project you'd see that it's a large set of if-then-else constructs. Nothing special. If I kept up the GPL and strictly enforced it, I'd turn into a patent troll.

aveilleux said...

I'm also not surprised that you're one of the hits I got from 4chan.

Unknown said...

Thanks for your script.

I dont see problem using MIT license. Its a good script but like you sayed anyone can see the simple code with the text editor.

armornick said...

Thank you very much :)
I was just about to create an ncurses interface to your script so it's really helpful that I can just use your code

aveilleux said...

Nick: An ncurses interface? To a BASH script?