dannym, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

MIT is a terrible license that only got popular because of the popularity of the anti-open source movement in the last decade.

one could write books about what’s wrong with the MIT license.

It could even theoretically be argued that MIT has in some ways allowed big tech companies to proliferate, by effectively allowing them to take open-source code, modify it, and then close it off in their proprietary software. What does this mean? It means that the work of countless dedicated open-source developers can be co-opted by companies that have done almost none of the work, reaping several billions of dollars, while the developers who actually did the work make no money. It’s like opening your doors wide only to have someone come in, take your stuff, and sell it back to you.

In contrast, in licenses like the GPL, there’s a requirement that if you use GPL-licensed code and modify it, your new code also has to be open-source under the GPL.