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Asahi Linux Drops MIT and Goes Full GPL After AI Tools Were Used to Steal Unreleased Code (itsfoss.com)
submitted 21 hours ago by to c/opensource@programming.dev
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[–] 10 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

If you read the article, you'd see..

What the GPL changes is the commercial benefit. Under MIT, someone can take Asahi's code, close it up, and sell a product, and that's perfectly legal as long as the notice stays in.

Under the GPL, anyone who distributes a modified version has to release the source under the same license. You can't legally build a closed, paid Apple Silicon distro on top of GPL code. And if a product's source has to be public, the copying is easier to spot.

The article explains that the GPL license will enable legal action against future use along those lines - and that WINE did the same thing back in the 90s, and its worked for them.

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  • [–] 4 points 18 hours ago

    it's weird that they just phrase it as "has to release the source code", it skips over the most important part. they have to release the source to any user who asks for it. if they want to be assholes about it they can request proof of purchase. unless the product is free, but then the question becomes "so what's the problem again?".

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  • [+] -6 points 21 hours ago (1 child)

    I deleted my comment a minute later because I didn't want to discuss it any further.

    But since you already replied: with ai rewriting, I don't think that the switch to gpl changes anything. Even if the bad actors now publish their code, how would it change what they do?

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  • [–] 6 points 20 hours ago*

    Because it includes the modified code from the GPL licensed code and any derivative works, which in many cases may mean the source code to their entire application including what they may consider sensitive IP has to be provided or readily made available to customers who have paid for the software. Further to this any paying customer who receives this source code can make it all publicly available for free which can effectivelly kill the paid software.

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