I think attitudes on license reflects on the whole a generational attitudes towards corporate use because the younger generation of software nerds grew up in epoch-boom-times.
During ZIRP-boom-times, having a successful popular open source project could be a ticket to kudos and a high paying job and a certain level of responsibility and satisfaction. BigCos spread the money around, and your job as a SWE ended up being gluing together a bunch of these open source pieces to solve corporate problems. And on the whole people felt like their corporate jobs were giving a fair deal, and a decent dividend for the open source work they were doing.
In that context why would you pick a license that your generous employer couldn't use?
The GPL and the free software movement is borne out of an earlier era, GenX and younger boomers who lived through seeing their hard work exploited and stolen from them. Or corporate entities that cut budgets, laid people off en masse, exploded in stock market crisis, etc and suddenly the good will was lost.
I think we'll see a bit of a resurgence in the GPL, as some people try to protect the work they've done.
(I do thnk the personality of Stallman himself has become a bit of a problem to be associated with)
My conspiracy theory: Stallman's "rough edges" were deliberately highlighted and blown out of proportion to discredit GPL and his overall ideology.
On one hand we have a guy, who just pointed out that the age of consent is a culture-dependent concept. On the other we have a guy who literally visited Epstein's island to fuck minors (as defined by his country of residence).
One is now considered "a bit of a problem". The other is a beloved public figure.
> The GPL and the free software movement is borne out of an earlier era, GenX and younger boomers who lived through seeing their hard work exploited and stolen from them.
There may be something to that, but speaking as a GenX'er myself, I release most of my OSS code using the Apache License. I really don't care if anybody - from a single student in a 3rd world country, to a Fortune 50 megacorp - uses the code, so long as they abide by the license.
I'm not going to say there's NO circumstance where that might ever change. But to date, that's been my approach and I don't particularly see it ever changing.
During ZIRP-boom-times, having a successful popular open source project could be a ticket to kudos and a high paying job and a certain level of responsibility and satisfaction. BigCos spread the money around, and your job as a SWE ended up being gluing together a bunch of these open source pieces to solve corporate problems. And on the whole people felt like their corporate jobs were giving a fair deal, and a decent dividend for the open source work they were doing.
In that context why would you pick a license that your generous employer couldn't use?
The GPL and the free software movement is borne out of an earlier era, GenX and younger boomers who lived through seeing their hard work exploited and stolen from them. Or corporate entities that cut budgets, laid people off en masse, exploded in stock market crisis, etc and suddenly the good will was lost.
I think we'll see a bit of a resurgence in the GPL, as some people try to protect the work they've done.
(I do thnk the personality of Stallman himself has become a bit of a problem to be associated with)