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Libxml2's "no security embargoes" policy

(lwn.net)
277 points jwilk | 1 comments | 25 Jun 25 19:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.335s | source
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kibwen ◴[25 Jun 25 22:01 UTC] No.44382195[source]▶
> Ariadne Conill, a long-time open-source contributor, observed that corporations using open source had responded with ""regulatory capture of the commons"" instead of contributing to the software they depend on.

I'm only half-joking when I say that one of the premier selling points of GPL over MIT in this day and age is that it explicitly deters these freeloading multibillion-dollar companies from depending on your software and making demands of your time.

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xxpor ◴[25 Jun 25 22:03 UTC] No.44382211[source]▶
Why bother open sourcing if you're not interested in getting people to use it?
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OkayPhysicist ◴[25 Jun 25 22:40 UTC] No.44382433[source]▶
The GPL does not prohibit anyone from using a piece of software. It exclusively limits the actions of bad faith users. If all people engaged with FOSS in good faith, we wouldn't need licenses, because all most FOSS licenses require of the acceptors is to do a couple of small, free activities that any decent person would do anyway. Thank/give credit to the authors who so graciously allowed you to use their work, and if you make any fixes or improvements, share alike.

Security issues like this are a prime example of why all FOSS software should be at least LGPLed. If a security bug is found in FOSS library, who's the more motivated to fix it? The dude who hacked the thing together and gave it away, or the actual users? Requesting that those users share their fixes is farrr from unreasonable, given that they have clearly found great utility in the software.

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1. SpicyLemonZest ◴[25 Jun 25 23:57 UTC] No.44382937[source]▶
The GPL "does not prohibit anyone" in a narrow legalistic sense. In colloquial discussions (see e.g. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.en.html), the Free Software Foundation is quite clear that the GPL exists to stop proprietary software developers from using your code by imposing conditions they can't satisfy.