Eh, I don’t see the issue here. The MIT license is fine for a few reasons:
attractive to lots of FOSS projects, like BSDs, Redox, etc
no incentive to embed into proprietary projects - ls, cp, etc aren’t particularly interesting to embed, and functionality is usually better in the stdlib of whatever language you’re using
increases appeal generally for research purposes
I really don’t see much benefit of GPL here. It makes sense for larger works with interesting snippets of code, but not for small, one-off tools like this.
If the other projects are licensed with a GPL, there is no issue doing any of these things (except using them for proprietary purposes later), which is the point. If you licensed your project incorrectly, that isn’t the GPL-licensed project’s fault.
GPL is more freedom for users and developers. MIT is less freedom for users because it grants more “freedom” for some company to exploit the developer’s labor by taking it to make something proprietary with it.
If you want to use GPL code, pushover licenses are incorrect because they protect the user and developer from this nonsense.
GPL is just as bad as proprietary licenses in the sense that GPL makes the user worry about the licensing of some library they just want to use. MIT, BSD,… give the code user the freedom to avoid worrying about licensing bullshit. GPL meanwhile doesn’t really solve any of the problems you claim it solves because all it does is duplicate effort and the non-GPL duplicate is used in a lot of places where a single copy of the code could be used if the GPL-using author hadn’t stubbornly insisted on a disproven theory of how GPL will save us.
I always see people with the argument that the developer labour is somehow being exploited. But have you never thought that maybe, just maybe, the person in question does not care? He just wanted to publish his creation and be done with it. He does not care if people are using it. That’s my case. I don’t care if people want to use my piece of cryptographic library. Just be aware that I am just some random dude, providing no support nor warranty. I make the library for my use cases and it works fine.
Right, because the GPL is viral, forcing everything to be GPL-compatible or you’ll have problems. Some FOSS licenses aren’t GPL-compatible, notably the CDDL used for OpenZFS, which is why it has been a part of FreeBSD but not Linux (and it’s available now outside the kernel).
The GPL makes more sense the more “application-y” your project is, but if you want it used more broadly, more permissive licenses make more sense. Yes, the LGPL exists, but there are still a ton of caveats to it.
The code in something like coreutils isn’t all that useful generally, so protecting it with the GPL doesn’t bring a ton of value, whereas a more permissive license could.
I like the GPL and its variants and I use it from time to time. I also like the MIT and similar permissive licenses, and I use them as well. Use the right license for the use case. I think the MIT is fine here.
Eh, I don’t see the issue here. The MIT license is fine for a few reasons:
I really don’t see much benefit of GPL here. It makes sense for larger works with interesting snippets of code, but not for small, one-off tools like this.
If the other projects are licensed with a GPL, there is no issue doing any of these things (except using them for proprietary purposes later), which is the point. If you licensed your project incorrectly, that isn’t the GPL-licensed project’s fault.
If you think other people disagreeing with you on how to license their own work is “incorrect” maybe you are the one not really in favor of freedom.
GPL is more freedom for users and developers. MIT is less freedom for users because it grants more “freedom” for some company to exploit the developer’s labor by taking it to make something proprietary with it.
If you want to use GPL code, pushover licenses are incorrect because they protect the user and developer from this nonsense.
GPL is just as bad as proprietary licenses in the sense that GPL makes the user worry about the licensing of some library they just want to use. MIT, BSD,… give the code user the freedom to avoid worrying about licensing bullshit. GPL meanwhile doesn’t really solve any of the problems you claim it solves because all it does is duplicate effort and the non-GPL duplicate is used in a lot of places where a single copy of the code could be used if the GPL-using author hadn’t stubbornly insisted on a disproven theory of how GPL will save us.
I always see people with the argument that the developer labour is somehow being exploited. But have you never thought that maybe, just maybe, the person in question does not care? He just wanted to publish his creation and be done with it. He does not care if people are using it. That’s my case. I don’t care if people want to use my piece of cryptographic library. Just be aware that I am just some random dude, providing no support nor warranty. I make the library for my use cases and it works fine.
Right, because the GPL is viral, forcing everything to be GPL-compatible or you’ll have problems. Some FOSS licenses aren’t GPL-compatible, notably the CDDL used for OpenZFS, which is why it has been a part of FreeBSD but not Linux (and it’s available now outside the kernel).
The GPL makes more sense the more “application-y” your project is, but if you want it used more broadly, more permissive licenses make more sense. Yes, the LGPL exists, but there are still a ton of caveats to it.
The code in something like coreutils isn’t all that useful generally, so protecting it with the GPL doesn’t bring a ton of value, whereas a more permissive license could.
I like the GPL and its variants and I use it from time to time. I also like the MIT and similar permissive licenses, and I use them as well. Use the right license for the use case. I think the MIT is fine here.