Context:
Permissive licenses (commonly referred to as “cuck licenses”) like the MIT license allow others to modify your software and release it under an unfree license. Copyleft licenses (like the Gnu General Public License) mandate that all derivative works remain free.
Andrew Tanenbaum developed MINIX, a modular operating system kernel. Intel went ahead and used it to build Management Engine, arguably one of the most widespread and invasive pieces of malware in the world, without even as much as telling him. There’s nothing Tanenbaum could do, since the MIT license allows this.
Erik Andersen is one of the developers of Busybox, a minimal implementation of that’s suited for embedded systems. Many companies tried to steal his code and distribute it with their unfree products, but since it’s protected under the GPL, Busybox developers were able to sue them and gain some money in the process.
Interestingly enough, Tanenbaum doesn’t seem to mind what intel did. But there are some examples out there of people regretting releasing their work under a permissive license.
Not all of us write code simply for monetary gain and some of us have philosophical differences on what you can and should own as far as the public commons goes. And not all of us view closed derivatives as a ontologically bad.
Please explain how allowing a third-party to limit computer users’ ability to control and modify their own property is anything other than ontologically bad?
If I release something free of restrictions to the world as a gift, that is my prerogative. And a third party’s actions don’t affect my ability to do whatever I want with the original code, nor the users of their product’s ability to do what they want with my code. And the idea of “property” here is pretty abstract. What is it you own when you purchase software? Certainly not everything. Probably not nothing. But there is a wide swath in between in which reasonable people can disagree.
If you are an intellectual property abolitionist, I doubt there is much I can say to change your mind.
Software licenses don’t change ownership. That requires transfer of copyright, like with contributor agreements.
Though I am aware that a small set of people seek less copyleft licenses because they think they’re better. They are usually wrong in their thinking, but they do exist.
I’m not sure what you are referring to about ontologically bad. Has someone said this?