cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/30924455
A few people pointed out that many [R]ust projects were MIT licensed and since then I indeed have seen MIT licensed projects everywhere in Rust. Then I found the link of this post and it looks like MIT was by far the most popular license in all of opensource in 2023.
Any ideas why?
I don’t have any reason to think this is particular to Rust. The MIT license is popular because it’s permissive, simple, and well-known. Developers often choose it when they want to maximize a project’s reach.
There is good reason to think it is not just rust.
The crux of it is that it allows for commercial use without needing to distribute the source code. Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on who you ask. There’s basically a continuum for open source software with GPLv3 at one end and MIT at the other.
GPLv3 guarantees that corporations can’t play games with patents or weird DRM to hobble an open source library and tie it to their closed source product. A lot of corporations will specifically bar employees from using GPLv3 code out of fear it could force them to open source their proprietary code as well.
At the other extreme you’ve got MIT which basically says do what you want with it. Fork it, embed it in your projects, sell copies of it if you want. Anything goes as long as you include a copy of the MIT license along with your software.
Rust tends to get a lot of commercial usage so GPLv2 or MIT tend to be chosen over GPlv3, and between them most companies feel more comfortable with MIT.
If you want to put an idea out there, permissive licenses are the most likely to promote it. Any individual or organization can use it without restrictions (or restrictions that aren’t unpalatable to most). So if what you’re trying to promote is an idea, a technique, or a standard, this type of license allows it to have the greatest reach.
People seem to forget that most of the open source language library code out there is written by people working for companies, being sponsored by companies or writing it so they can use it where they work. Some might start out as hobbiest projects but if it survives and grows it eventually will be sponsored in some form. Even if indirectly by some guy that wants to use it where he works.
From what i understand if you wrote it you can just license the public version via GPL and license the private version that you wrote for your job what ever you want since you own it.
This assumes you wrote the project without company tools and on your free time.
If you license your project under GPL, and somebody submits some code (like through a pull request) that ends up in the library you use, you are now also bound by the GPL license, meaning you also have to publish the source of any derivatives.
The way to avoid it is to use something like a CLA, requiring every contributor to sign an agreement giving you special rights to their code, so you can ignore the GPL license in relation to the code they wrote. This works, but is obviously exploitative, taking rights to contributions while giving out less.
It also means if somebody forks the project, you can’t pull in their changes (if you can’t meet GPL terms, of course), unlike with MIT, where by default everybody can make their own versions, public or private, for any purpose.
Though it’s worth noting, if you license your code under MIT, a fork can still add the GPL license on top, which means if you wanted to pull in their changes you’d be bound to both licenses and thus GPL terms. I believe this is also by design in the GPL license, to give open-source an edge, though that can be a bit of a dick move when done to a good project, since it lets the GPL fork pull in changes from MIT versions without giving back to them.
In my case, the repository does not allow pull requests so it’s fine.
The company you work for will likely not like that. Needs a special case license to be drawn up would probably need to involve lawyers and cost far more then is worth the hassle. Vastly easier just to give it a MIT license.
You can always use your own code however you want. However, if your project starts to get contributions from other people, that’s where it can start to become more muddy.
Because it helps the corporations. And makes everything easier to static linking I guess which is default.
It’s an easy license to reason about, allows for basically any project to use it, and you don’t need to worry about trying to enforce it (Because the GPL is only as good as your lawyers are)
There’s a GPL compliance lawsuit going on where they’re suing as a user under contract law, instead of as the copyright holder. Perhaps you can say the GPL is as good as anyone’s lawyers, in the near future.
True, that’d definitely make it a lot more viable to hold corporations to account.
Some claim they value their users having the “most” freedom. However, since MIT permits code use within proprietary software then that would exclude downstream users (users of their users, ad infinitum).
I would like to use my projects in work, I can’t force them to open everything, because I would have to find something else.
I’m not a Rust programmer, but I’ve released a lot of code under MIT in the past and my reason for picking it was because it was so simple and flexible when it comes to reusing it with code under other licenses.
I recall once, years ago, a user coming to me quite angry about how I was releasing code under a license that permitted corporations to “steal” it. Just for him I dual-licensed that particular bit of code under MIT and GPL. He never responded so I guess that satisfied him? Whatever, I’m just happy he went away.
