BUburntsushi·Oct 30, 2020
Hmmm, maybe there is some confusion here. At least for ripgrep in particular, it has always been dual licensed under the MIT and the UNLICENSE[1]. This was itself a continuation of a decision I made a bit earlier with regards to another project[2]. Namely, I had been using only the UNLICENSE. But dual licensing with the MIT allowed folks with a more conservative risk profile to use the project.
But the point of linking to VS Code's decision was to say that I have direct experience with situations in which a copyleft license might have inhibited use of my software. That is, it's an example that runs counter to my goal of as many people using my code as possible.
This doesn't mean copyleft is never used in popular projects or that copyleft somehow perfectly inhibits popularity. I mean, obviously that's not true. But the existence of popular
Read the rest
copyleft projects doesn't mean that copyleft isn't itself a barrier to use in other circumstances.
[1] - https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/COPYING
[2] - https://github.com/BurntSushi/byteorder/issues/26