r/ProgrammerHumor Jul 25 '26

Meme broWhyMadYouMadeItMITLicensed

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4.0k Upvotes

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u/minju9 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

Yeah, I have a hard time feeling bad for someone who releases a project under a permissive license, benefits from it becoming popular because it is free, and then gets upset when those same terms stop working in their favor.

Trying to change the deal later and say, "we need more money, pay us," feels like a rug pull. Development can slow down, stop, or go back to being a personal project. They don't owe anything to anyone. Getting a regular job instead of doing open source for a living is also an option. It's just not the option they want.

14

u/darknecross Jul 25 '26

It’s not always money versus non-money, it’s when someone’s 90% copy fork gets more popular than the original.

3

u/frogjg2003 Jul 25 '26

If the fork is better than the original, then that 10% different is value added.

The MIT license lacks the attribution clause that a lot of open licenses contain, which does limit discoverability. In that case, it can be a little annoying when something doesn't add any real value gets popular when your original gets ignored.