#Q: Why does the #Rust community tend to reimplement #GPL licensed code as #MIT licensed Rust code?

[dlc@mstdn.social]

#Q: Why does the #Rust community tend to reimplement #GPL licensed code as #MIT licensed Rust code?

[srazkvt@tech.lgbt]

@DLC same as any other mit project, either it's a corporation aiming to disrupt and gain power in a specific niche, or people who got fed propaganda about how permissive licenses is better than copyleft licenses

[meluzzy@woof.tech]

@DLC That's a good question. If I had to guess I would go for the common misconception of:

- "MIT is less restrictive so It gives more freedom".

And the fallacy:

- "The more freedom the more fair; the more fair the more moral".

All of this just to end up with the so common result of: "They took my code and bundled it into a private toolchain used to [insert the most unethical use possible] and they are harming thousands of people with it while making a profit"

This is often done with the objective of performing the following "flex" maneuver in their CVs: "The code I wrote for my library ended up being used by [evil company] and thats amazing!"

> Remember folks that some people were indoctrinated into thinking that serving evil companies is something to be proud of.

Such are the wonders of "Freedom as in MIT"

[caleb@hachyderm.io]

@DLC if this is a reference to uutils/coreutils, I don't think a lot of thought went into it. The repo got the MIT licence added in the first commit in **2013**

https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/commit/d4e96b33e343733992fad55ac840c9649cd72ede

[cybertailor@deadinsi.de]

@DLC maybe because license compatibility and complience is hard with static linking

[slatian@pleroma.envs.net]

@cybertailor@deadinsi.de @DLC@mstdn.social At least the AGPL 3.0 makes sure that both statically and dynamically linked libraries are covered by "Corresponding Source" with the main goal being that someone can obtain all source files for an (A)GPL program they have been given access to (oversimplified) so they can exercise the rights they have on software under the license.

[jak2k@mastodontech.de]

@slatian @cybertailor @DLC And that's also the reason I license my Rust under AGPL (and sometimes also under GAL).

[noisytoot@berkeley.edu.pl]

@cybertailor @DLC It's not really any different unless you're writing a proprietary program that's linking against an LGPL'd library. If you're linking against an (A)GPL'd library, your program must be free software anyway and it doesn't matter if it's being linked statically or dynamically, and if your program is free software it doesn't matter if you're using static or dynamic linking since you can just provide source code.

The only difference is if you're writing a proprietary program linked to an LGPL'd library, in which case you must provide a way for the user to replace the LGPL'd library (which would usually be providing the .o files and letting the user relink them)