A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest
Maybe a naive or silly question, but Which currently existing software license do you prefer? And from a Marxist point of view? Or maybe there is currently no good license from your point of view?
A Marxist wouldn’t usually ask such a question in a vacuum. Which license is good for what purpose(s) and under what condition(s)?
An answer that is very lazy and extremely presumptuous of what you really meant by your question: the one Lemmy uses, AGPL.
Which license is good for what purpose(s) and under what condition(s)?
Exactly this. It really depends on the goals of the project. For example, if you're trying to establish some standard where the most widespread possible use/support is the goal (because in the grand scheme of things the goal is to replace a proprietary standard), then a permissive license (BSD and friends) is appropriate. If the code itself is the more important thing and you want to protect it from being appropriated/exploited by proprietary software, then a copyleft license (GPL and friends) is appropriate. If the latter and it's a web app and you want to protect it from other servers/services as well, then the AGPL is appropriate. Sometimes (configuration, "just data", and so on) the whole idea of copyright restrictions is silly and counter-productive, so one of the "closest to public domain as is legally possible" (0BSD, CC0, etc) "unlicenses" is appropriate.
Thanks for your answer. You are right, this question is probably too abstract. I usually prefer GPL and AGPL licenses for my small applications. I was mostly wondering if maybe there are lesser-known licenses besides the most well-known free software licenses that would be worth using. Maybe some new licenses that prohibit the training of "AI" on source code or closed-source "AI", for example...
Any copyleft one is good enough. Personally I prefer GPLv3+