• MangoCats@feddit.it
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    2 days ago

    The mit license allows someone (some company) to modify the open source codebase and sell the result without making their modifications public.

    That is not equivalent to closure of the commons, that’s some company spinning a proprietary version of something. If they try to sell it, most people won’t buy - most people will continue to use the FOSS version. The people they sell it to may enjoy the proprietary enhancements, but that doesn’t prevent the FOSS community from developing those enhancements in the open if they so choose.

    MIT license is not a software patent.

    • doodoo_wizard@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      The enclosure of the commons.

      It’s a thing that happened a long time ago during the Industrial Revolution in England where land that people used to grow subsistence or cash crops for their own use as opposed to their lords use (land called the commons) was fenced in and given to newly elevated lords as estates.

      The effect was that people who could live in villages before were forced to move to the cities and live in slums or poorhouses and became laborers in mills.

      E: clarity

      • MangoCats@feddit.it
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        1 day ago

        Oh, so you believe MP3 pirates have actually stolen something off of the retail music shelves as well, then? Digital piracy is the ultimate evil and all that? Supporting strong jail terms for pirates, are you?

        The difference between the commons of the industrial revolution and the commons of the digital landscape is that the commons of old was a finite resource. The digital commons is effectively infinite.