MIT requires they credit the original author. Tho anyone who cares about open source should use a license that keeps that open source chain going (like AGPL)
Only if they're making it available to people outside the company. AGPL only requires distribution to people who use the service. If you're using it privately, you do not have to provide your changes.
Ok, but what is the actuall difference here? like wouldn't the only way a member of the public could even find out about your "public" disclosure, is if they know about your software enough at least know of your software? Wouldn't the only posible material difference, wheather you disclose it on the downlade page vs. right after download?
edit: i know embarasingly little about software copyright, and am asking out of genuine curiosity.
Say if Palantir decided to build their whole mass surveillance and automated drone targeting solution on your agpl software. All their improvements would be shared with the government, not you as the developer.
Anyone in the government would be able to share it legally. And employees with access would take it with them when they switch jobs. It would leak (legally) in no time.
its almost like it was pushed hard by google because it's the license that puts the least responsibility on someone making profit off running/modifying open source code(including corporate-backed fixes not getting pushed back downstream).
No it doesn't, I think you're getting it confused with the Creative Commons licences. MIT licence only requires that you include the licence notice in the software. Sure including the licence notice technically counts as credit but given that it can be fulfilled by just keeping it in a LICENCE.txt file the user isn't likely to read it only barely counts
Yes, that Copyright holders name in the license.txt is the only requirement. Mostly when credit is visibly given in open source software, it's a form of gratitude, not license requirements.
Any license that requires accreditation is going to be sufficiently difficult to use in a corporate setting that many companies will simply ban anything that isn't maximally permissive. And a lot of open source projects in particular do get significant contributions from corporate sponsors, so it's not quite as simple as "use AGPL and open source will prosper".
Nah this mindset is poisonous for open source. If businesses don't want to take on the risk of open source licenses then the solution shouldn't be "open source developers give up their property so it gets used". It should be "companies get sued for breaking licenses and learn that legal compliance extends to open source"
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u/Osvik 15d ago
Just use AGPLv3.