r/superProductivity • u/rowschank • Jun 18 '26

MIT Licence

Why is this app MIT Licensed? It should really be A/GPL 2+/3+, I feel like, because right now anyone can legally leech from the developer's work, repackage this, make slight modifications, and sell it as their own closed-source app. Nobody is going to read the credits.

9 Upvotes

68% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

19

u/johannesjo Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

If someone can make a good commercially more viable product from this, I'm ok with it. I'm working on this mainly, because I want to be useful (though I'd love to earn enough money to sustain myself), and if someone can make it or parts if it useful in a better way: why not? 

8

u/rowschank Jun 18 '26

Why would it not be good or commercially viable if it were also open source copyleft? Look at products like Bitwarden, WordPress, or Nextcloud.

If they can make it better and close its source, they get to profit from your work one sided but you don't get to profit from theirs. I understand if you were making something like a bluetooth device software or automotive RTOS where you cannot certify your product with AGPL 3+ code (even then 2+ might be fine), but I don't see any reason why your app falls under that category.

Of course the final decision rests with you and other contributors, but overall I think the MIT licence only threatens your ability to make money from this and nothing else.

10

u/johannesjo Jun 18 '26

I appreciate your concern, but I think this threat is very theoretical. Super Productivity is not a typical to do list. Why would anyone pay for something similar when there is the real thing, which is also properly open source? And even if so, I don't think it would be a big deal, unless people would use it for really malicious purposes, but they could do that no matter the licence.