• Sanyanov@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The difference is that with permissive licenses everyone can take any amount of code, add literally whatever and make it all proprietary. This way, things like MacOS, as well as gaming console firmware for example, were made.

    Licenses like GPL don’t allow you to do that - if you borrow anything GPL, you have to make your creation open-source, or else a juicy lawsuit awaits you, technically on copyright basis. For example, Android as a base OS is open-source simply because it uses code from Linux kernel, and the latter is licensed under GPLv2.

    The latter is superior since it propagates the open-source code by forcing everyone who used the free code to share their code as well. This proved to be very useful with even corporations having their hands tied into showing the code, ensuring transparency and security for everyone.