Or maybe the users are just not aware. Licenses flame wars were a thing over 20 years ago, people nowadays can totally don't know about what can happen to a MIT-licensed software.
Not trying to diminish broader trends in the software landscape, but this thread was talking about big established gnu software (like GPG) and newer rust based alternatives (like sequoia mentioned in the recording). This choice seems fairly unmediated by large corporations. Probably has more to do with the popularity of rust and how well they market, but the license doesn’t seem to matter that much to people.
Obviously I am aware that not all user actions represent choices, but the hypothetical being proposed was specifically in the context of good established free software alternatives existing. In that context users switching to software with more permissive licenses would imply a choice on the users part. It is reasonable to assume this choice implies the users value something about the other software more than they value what the GPL incumbent has to offer. Of course such a choice could be motivated by many things like newer features, slick website, the author’s marketing, but whatever the case if the license was not sufficient enticement to stay, this feels significant.
Hey, this is a completely unacceptable comment on HN. Please read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them if you want to participate here. We have to ban accounts that do this repeatedly. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
