I've chosen a license (MIT) accepted by Google (and many others) specifically because it enables abuse and exploitation, as a sort of defensive tactic. It's a kind of game theory approach, though it doesn't speak well for the future of open source…
I'm from the music and the music-instrument industries, so it's natural for me to recognize consolidated power when I see it. From where I stand, the only people who've ever achieved a platform from which they could express anything (up to and including the Eagles) got there through a stage where they could be ruthlessly exploited and sucked dry of all they had, with no recompense.
Open source can be like that, which is why the GPL exists: it's a counterbalance. That alone is extremely valuable. In my music example the GPL can be the Irving Azoff, going to war against software unfreeness and making its clients wealthy and successful and granting power in a practical sense.
However, in my opinion you can't get there from zero: trying to wield that power from a starting-up position will only get you shunned, and so we see here in the Google banned license list. The only licenses allowed are those where the original creator can be completely exploited.
You have to both be good, and prepared to be horribly exploited, to get access to power and attention on a viral scale. If you try to strike a fair deal from the start, it's a recipe for being shunned or blackballed.
By definition the power differential between a lone creator and idea-haver, and a vast company, is huge. No license phraseology can take that away.
So, since I do things with software that I want to proliferate and become popular, I have to select a license that allows for companies and individuals to abuse me. In so doing, their self-interest is evident. In return, the license asks for 'exposure' on my behalf: credit, and even that's not a given.
So my tactic in handling this stuff is to try and set up a scenario where I'm also praising to the skies anyone who uses my source, in hopes that they in turn see PR benefit in praising me. It's power again: from my position of minimal power and ownership of useful code, I have to signal to the more powerful entity that I'll let them completely take advantage of me if only they throw me some crumbs.
Then, if one day I do end up powerful, I hopefully come up with something really indispensable, and THEN I GPL it and chuckle merrily when they come to me for alternate terms.
Until then, open source licensing has absolutely no power to better my situation, and its ability to aid the freedom of the code under its umbrella applies only to that code and not to any of the people responsible for thinking up the code. They've got to be either completely self-sacrificing, or making a machiavellian calculation about relative power much as I am.
Sharing can only be done from a position of power and abundance. Once that's granted, you learn how badly the sharer needs to maintain their position of power…
Though you've taken a different path with licensing than I have (I release under GPLv3, even though I don't actually consider myself a Free Software fundamentalist), I very much respect your decision and your post here. You're probably the only person I've seen advocate for MIT et. al. who acknowledges the major power disparity between individual maintainers and gigantocorps. It's given me something to think about with regards to my own projects. I still may not release under MIT, but it may lead me to working in very different ways.
I'm from the music and the music-instrument industries, so it's natural for me to recognize consolidated power when I see it. From where I stand, the only people who've ever achieved a platform from which they could express anything (up to and including the Eagles) got there through a stage where they could be ruthlessly exploited and sucked dry of all they had, with no recompense.
Open source can be like that, which is why the GPL exists: it's a counterbalance. That alone is extremely valuable. In my music example the GPL can be the Irving Azoff, going to war against software unfreeness and making its clients wealthy and successful and granting power in a practical sense.
However, in my opinion you can't get there from zero: trying to wield that power from a starting-up position will only get you shunned, and so we see here in the Google banned license list. The only licenses allowed are those where the original creator can be completely exploited.
You have to both be good, and prepared to be horribly exploited, to get access to power and attention on a viral scale. If you try to strike a fair deal from the start, it's a recipe for being shunned or blackballed.
By definition the power differential between a lone creator and idea-haver, and a vast company, is huge. No license phraseology can take that away.
So, since I do things with software that I want to proliferate and become popular, I have to select a license that allows for companies and individuals to abuse me. In so doing, their self-interest is evident. In return, the license asks for 'exposure' on my behalf: credit, and even that's not a given.
So my tactic in handling this stuff is to try and set up a scenario where I'm also praising to the skies anyone who uses my source, in hopes that they in turn see PR benefit in praising me. It's power again: from my position of minimal power and ownership of useful code, I have to signal to the more powerful entity that I'll let them completely take advantage of me if only they throw me some crumbs.
Then, if one day I do end up powerful, I hopefully come up with something really indispensable, and THEN I GPL it and chuckle merrily when they come to me for alternate terms.
Until then, open source licensing has absolutely no power to better my situation, and its ability to aid the freedom of the code under its umbrella applies only to that code and not to any of the people responsible for thinking up the code. They've got to be either completely self-sacrificing, or making a machiavellian calculation about relative power much as I am.
Sharing can only be done from a position of power and abundance. Once that's granted, you learn how badly the sharer needs to maintain their position of power…