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Libxml2's "no security embargoes" policy

(lwn.net)
278 points jwilk | 2 comments | 25 Jun 25 19:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | 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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spott ◴[26 Jun 25 02:03 UTC] No.44383593[source]▶
This makes an assumption that a bunch of companies are maintaining their own forks of MIT software with bug fixes and features and not giving it back.

I find that hard to believe.

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canyp ◴[26 Jun 25 02:47 UTC] No.44383803[source]▶
Not really. A company that does not bother contributing to a liberally-licensed project will 100% avoid GPL software like the plague. In either case, they won't contribute. In the latter case, they don't get to free-ride like a parasite.
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1. jenadine ◴[26 Jun 25 06:17 UTC] No.44384660[source]▶
> will 100% avoid GPL software like the plague.

Not true. Many companies uses Linux for example.

They will just avoid using GPL software in ways that would impact their own intellectual property (linking a GPL library to their proprietary software). Sometimes they will even use it with dubious "workaround" such as saying "we use a deamon with IPC so that's ok"

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2. quietbritishjim ◴[26 Jun 25 10:36 UTC] No.44386022[source]▶
> > will 100% avoid GPL software like the plague.

> Not true. Many companies uses Linux for example.

I thought it was clear, given that this is a discussion about an open source library, that they were talking about GPL libraries. The way that standalone GPL software is used in companies is qualitatively quite different.