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GPL is also a possible alternative. Big companies pay you back by contributing to the project, insofar as it is worth it to them to maintain a fork and add features for their own use.


Sadly, GPL doesn't give you that. It only gives users the modified source code. No history, no time of fork. And nothing to the developer.

I think it might be time to upgrade GPL to the age of modern internet, and have licenses requiring that modification are actually PR-ed (or sent by mail or whatever) to the author.

Hell I'd even think that there could be licenses where you are required to use mainline for anything remotely looking like production, and you are not allowed to fork, you're only allowed to use as-is, and to contribute. This one would definitely not be considered FLOSS, but some components really would benefit from not having an infinite number of forks, like the Linux kernel.


This unfortunately worked much better before it was feasible to hide everything behind a server, having no releases so to speak at all


Is this not the purpose of AGPL?


The purpose of AGPL is to have a bunch of people harass you about you daring to have the temerity of not letting them run their business on your code for free.


But isn’t it cathartic when you tell those people to fuck off?




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