I saw this meme too, and I am not convinced it isn't closer to the $5 tier instead of the optimistic $24 dollars the meme portrays. Companies be company-ing after all.

Universities too 👍

There's The Anti-Capitalist Software License (ACSL) which is even more strict. Software under the ACSL can only be used by individuals, nonprofits, educational institutions, and worker-owned companies.

They would just fork it at that version. Licenses aren't retroactive.

You can relicense code. Though that doesn't mean that you can take anything away. You just open another avenue for people to use what you wrote and developed, and any old license still exists and retains validity; the way you can curtail rights is by not granting liberal terms on newly created code.

This is how macOS switched to zsh, and left all GNU code in it to rot.

It’s possible. “GPLv2+” code picked up the new terms when GPLv3 was released, and if GPLv4 is ever released, the v4 terms will also apply.

This is why the Linux kernel specifies GPLv2. Not v2+, only v2.

Would it be possible to update the license on a version update of an existing library

Only the original author can do that, so if that library has many contributors to the code, they must ALL agree to the change. Which is why huge projects like the Linux kernel can probably never change their license.

very. you could just keep it ARR, and only give rights to those you like.

But… thats also just a license. Any use except for the creator necessitates a license of some sort or the release to the public domain.

Probably because it's a big hassle. But of course there are projects that work that way or similar. Some big open source projects like Magento have an open source core but sell an enterprise version with closed plugins.

Unreal has its source code freely available to use but when you sell enough stuff you have to pay.

And I have seen several developers offering their open source software for sale to companies that don't want to contribute back or don't want to open up their integration.

This meme is coming on 30 years old in terms of content.

https://itsfoss.com/news/asahi-linux-drops-mit-for-gpl/

Pretty typical. Apple has been doing this for a long time now.

I don't think it's topical in the sense of "this joke riffs on a current news cycle event," which is how I think of "topical humour". But it kind of is, in that this debate over licenses is ongoing since RMS invented the GPL.

Non-copyleft licenses are shortsighted, they ignore what happens after. The code may be open at the moment it's being shared, but it won't stay open in the future if you don't plan for it. That's what copyleft does.

I find it fascinating that some people's definition of freedom is so narrow as to completely ignore consequences. It's like saying "I'm more free than the average person because unlike them I can step out this window and fly for 2 seconds". Great, but then what?

if you can see the code, it's open source. the term you're looking for is FOSS, and it's "free" as in the community is free to benefit from all modifications as a whole. freedom of end users vs freedom of developers.