Dumb software licensing
and how to avoid getting into the its shithole
It is no mistery for those who read the about me page of this blog that I'm a libertarian. Naturally, I'm against all kind of licensing and I honestly think that intelectual property do not exist, and is rather just a weapon and tool designed to control and restrict the free flow of knowledge.
Many might argue that I'm no sane person, and they might be right. But, I beg to differ. Maybe, just maybe, if you hear me out for a second, you'll see that it's everyone else that is trapped in the shithole of software licensing.
GPL is crap and I can prove it
Ah yes, the good ol' GPL. You can't go wrong with it! Anyone is free to run it, study and modify it, share copies, and share even modified versions of ones work! So, what's wrong with that?
Free as in freedom, not as in price
With this sweet talk and nice premise one might wonder how can a sane mind see a problem with that? And, well I actually might be insane because all I see is a heap of rotting fetuses.
They call themselves "free" while denying downstream developers one important, if the not the most important, freedom of all: the freedom to redistribute the software under terms of their own choosing.
A piece of code where you might use it while being restricted on any derivatives which, I kid you not, contemplates both a modified version of said software OR any thing that uses it can really be considered free?
These motherfuckers go as far as hiding goddamn copyrights rebranded as a fancy term: "copyleft". Meaning, that they enforce all this bullshit non-sense through copyright law! I'm not tripping, they openly state that in their website.
It is a license that makes your software very much communistic. It treats privately enclosing it as socially illegitimate, it submits your individual discretion to a collective objetive, and it forces you to adhere to its terms in a very authoritarian way.
How the fuck is this free? What freedom is that?
If having conditions is restrictive, no license is actually free.
And you are goddamn right, and that's the fucking point. I used GPL as the scapegoat for this note but, you just noticed (or not) the entire trick the software community has been imposing on us for literal decades.
The moment a license restricts something it revokes its free software condition and creates an overall worse environment for software to thrive in.
The FSF quitely changes the subject and diverts attention when people actually questions their so called "freedom". Why? Because, it does not maximize the freedom of the immediate recipient, truly.
And many, many, many other licenses do this as well.
A freedom that cannot be voluntarily waived is not being treated as individual property.
It is being treated as a collective entitlement administered through law.
- Yours Truly
The GPL and many others are not communism as a complete economic system, but its moral logic is unmistakably collectivist: individual licensing autonomy is subordinated to the permanent preservation of a shared software commons.
There's nowhere to run. Or is there?
Public domain as weapon against authoritarianism
Authoritarian power depends on permission, it depends on someone retaining the authority to decide who may speak, publish, modify, distribute, or build upon an idea.
Copyright can become one such instrument of control, a legal veto over copying, adaptation, preservation, and dissemination.
Public domain licenses removes that veto althogether. Once software enters the public domain, no author, corporation, foundation, or ideological movement can dictate how it must be used. And that is fucking awesome!
Nobody can revoke access because a user became politically inconvenient. Nobody can demand allegiance to a licensing philosophy. Nobody can prohibit an unfavored group from modifying the code, preserving it, translating it, or distributing it through alternative channels.
Public-domain code can simply be copied and continued. There is no central authority whose permission is required and no licensing covenant through which conformity can be enforced.
That is why instruments such as the Unlicense are more than convenient permissive licenses. They are acts of renunciation. The author refuses the role of permanent legislator over future users. Instead of prescribing how freedom must be exercised, the author gives up the power to prescribe anything at all.
Unlicense your code, free your soul.
By now, the conclusion should be clear, real software freedom lies in the public domain. The only difficulty is making that intention legally explicit.
That is what the Unlicense is for.
The Unlicense is OSI-approved and has the SPDX identifier Unlicense, so it is recognized by the broader software ecosystem. It allows anyone to use, copy, modify, publish, compile, sell, or distribute the code for any purpose.
No reciprocity. No mandatory source disclosure. No ideological inheritance.
Where possible, the work is dedicated to the public domain. Where copyright cannot be fully abandoned, the license grants broad permission instead.
The GPL gives freedom under permanent conditions. The Unlicense gives the code away and relinquishes control.
That distinction matters. Freedom is not allowing people to make only the choices you approve of. Freedom includes the possibility that they may use your work commercially, privately, selfishly, or in ways you dislike.
The Unlicense does not force cooperation. It leaves cooperation voluntary.
You wrote the code. Now let it go.
Unlicense your code, and free your soul.
System.exit(0);