Why I used to prefer permissive licenses and now favor copyleft

Within free open source software (and free content more generally), there are two major categories of copyright licenses:

在免费开源软件（以及更广泛的免费内容）中，版权许可有两大类：

In summary: permissive licenses freely share with everyone, copyleft licenses freely share only with those who are also willing to freely share .

总之：宽松的许可证与所有人自由共享，copyleft 许可证仅与那些也愿意自由共享的人自由共享。

I have been a fan of, and developer of, free open source software and free content ever since I've been old enough to understand what these things are and build things that I thought other people might find useful.

自从我长大到能够理解这些东西是什么并构建我认为其他人可能会觉得有用的东西时，我就一直是免费开源软件和免费内容的粉丝和开发者。

Historically, I was a fan of the permissive approach (eg.

从历史上看，我是宽容方法的粉丝（例如。

my blog is under the WTFPL ).

我的博客属于 WTFPL ）。

More recently, I am warming up to the copyleft approach.

最近，我开始热衷于 Copyleft 方法。

This post explains my reasons why.

这篇文章解释了我的原因。

One style of software freedom, promoted by the WTFPL .

WTFPL 提倡的一种软件自由风格。

But not the only style.

但不是唯一的风格。

First, I wanted to maximize adoption and distribution of my work, and releasing it under permissive licenses facilitates that, by making it clear that there is nothing anyone needs to worry about if they want to build off of something I make.

首先，我想最大限度地提高我的作品的采用和分发，并在宽松的许可证下发布它，通过明确表示如果任何人想要在我制作的东西的基础上进行构建，则无需担心任何事情，从而促进这一点。

Enterprises are often unwilling to release their projects freely, and given that I did not see myself having any ability to nudge them to fully join the free software side, I wanted to avoid being needlessly incompatible with the approach they already had and would not give up.

企业往往不愿意自由地发布他们的项目，鉴于我不认为自己有能力推动他们完全加入自由软件方面，我想避免与他们已有的方法不必要地不兼容，并且不会放弃。

Second, I generally philosophically dislike copyright (and patents).

其次，我通常在哲学上不喜欢版权（和专利）。

I dislike the idea that two people privately sharing bits of data between each other can be perceived as committing a crime against a third party whom they are not touching or even communicating with and are not taking anything away from (no, "not paying" is NOT the same as "stealing").

我不喜欢这样的想法：两个人私下之间共享一些数据可能会被视为对第三方犯罪，他们没有接触过第三方，甚至没有与之沟通，也没有拿走任何东西（不，“不支付”与“窃取”不同）。

Explicitly releasing to public domain is legally complicated for various reasons , and so a permissive license is the cleanest and safest way to get as close as possible to not copyrighting your works.

由于各种原因，明确发布到公共领域在法律上很复杂，因此许可许可是尽可能接近不为您的作品提供版权的最干净、最安全的方式。

I do appreciate the copyleft idea of "using copyright against itself" - it's a beautiful legal hack.

我确实很欣赏 Copyleft 的“利用版权来对抗自身”的想法——这是一个美丽的法律黑客。

In some ways it's similar what I always found philosophically beautiful about libertarianism.

在某些方面，这与我一直认为自由主义在哲学上的美丽相似。

As a political philosophy, it's often described as banishing the use of violent force except for one application: to protect people from other violent force.

作为一种政治哲学，它通常被描述为禁止使用暴力武力，但有一个用途除外：保护人们免受其他暴力武力的侵害。

As a social philosophy, I sometimes see it as a way of taming the harmful effects of the human disgust reflex by making freedom itself a sacred thing that we find it disgusting to defile: even if you think two other people having an unusual consensual sexual relationship is disgusting, you can't go after them, because interfering in the private lives of free human beings is itself disgusting.

作为一种社会哲学，我有时将其视为一种抑制人类厌恶反射有害影响的方法，让自由本身成为一种神圣的东西，我们发现玷污它是令人厌恶的：即使你认为另外两个人拥有不寻常的自愿性关系是令人厌恶的，你也不能追随他们，因为干涉自由人类的私生活本身就是令人厌恶的。

So in principle, there are historical precedents to show that disliking copyright is compatible with using copyright against itself.

因此，原则上，历史先例表明，不喜欢版权与利用版权来对抗版权是兼容的。

However, while copyleft of written work fits into this definition, GPL-style copyright of code oversteps beyond a minimalistic notion of "using copyright against itself", because it offensively uses copyright for a different purpose: mandating publication of source code .

然而，虽然书面作品的 Copyleft 符合这个定义，但 GPL 风格的代码版权超越了“利用版权反对自身”的简约概念，因为它冒犯性地将版权用于不同的目的：强制发布源代码。

This is a public-spirited purpose, and not a selfish purpose of collecting licensing fees, but it is nevertheless an offensive use of copyright.

这是一个公益目的，而不是收取许可费的自私目的，但它仍然是对版权的冒犯性使用。

This becomes even more true for stricter licenses like the AGPL , which require publication of source code of derivative works even if you never publish them and only make them available via software-as-a-service.

对于像 AGPL 这样更严格的许可证来说更是如此，它要求发布衍生作品的源代码，即使您从未发布它们并且仅通过软件即服务提供它们。

Different types of software licenses, with different sets of conditions under which someone making a derivative work is required to share the source code.

不同类型的软件许可证，具有不同的条件，在这些条件下，制作衍生作品的人需要共享源代码。

Some of them require publishing source code under a wide variety of situations.

其中一些需要在各种情况下发布源代码。

Source here .

来源在这里。

My switch from favoring permissive to favoring copyleft is motivated by two world events and one philosophical shift.

我从支持宽容转向支持 Copyleft 的转变是由两件世界事件和一次哲学转变推动的。

First, open source has become mainstream, and nudging enterprises toward it is much more practical .

首先，开源已经成为主流，推动企业走向开源更加现实。

Plenty of companies in all kinds of industries are embracing open source.

各行各业的许多公司都在拥抱开源。

Companies like Google , Microsoft and Huawei are embracing open source, and even building major software packages open.

谷歌、微软和华为等公司正在拥抱开源，甚至构建开放的主要软件包。

New industries, including AI and of course crypto, are heavier on open source than previous industries ever were.

新行业，包括人工智能，当然还有加密货币，比以前的行业更加依赖开源。

Second, the crypto space in particular has become more competitive and mercenary , and we are less able than before to count on people open-sourcing their work purely out of niceness.

其次，加密领域尤其变得更具竞争性和唯利是图，我们比以前更不能指望人们纯粹出于善意而开源他们的工作。

Hence, the argument for open source cannot just rely on "please"; it must also be accompanied by the "hard power" of giving access to some code only to those who open up theirs.

因此，开源的论点不能仅仅依靠“请”；它还必须伴随着“硬实力”，即只允许那些开放其代码的人访问某些代码。

One way to visualize how both pressures increase the relative value of copyleft is a graph like this:

可视化两种压力如何增加 Copyleft 相对价值的一种方法是绘制如下图表：

Incentivizing open source is most valuable in situations where it's neither unrealistic, nor guaranteed.

在既不现实又没有保证的情况下，激励开源是最有价值的。

Today, both mainstream enterprise and crypto are in that situation.

如今，主流企业和加密货币都处于这种情况。

This makes the value of incentivizing open source via copyleft high.

这使得通过 Copyleft 激励开源的价值很高。

Third, Glen Weyl-style economic arguments have convinced me that, in the presence of superlinear returns to scale, the optimal policy is actually NOT Rothbard/Mises-style strict property rights.

第三，格伦·韦尔式的经济论证让我相信，在超线性规模回报的情况下，最优政策实际上不是罗斯巴德/米塞斯式的严格产权。

Rather, the optimal policy does involve some nonzero amount of more actively pushing projects to be more open than they otherwise would be.

相反，最优政策确实涉及一些非零数量的更积极地推动项目比其他情况更加开放。

Fundamentally, if you assume economies of scale, then by simple mathematical reasoning, nonzero openness is the only way that the world does not eventually converge to one actor controlling everything.

从根本上说，如果你假设规模经济，那么通过简单的数学推理，非零开放性是世界最终不会收敛到一个控制一切的参与者的唯一途径。

Economies of scale means that if I have 2x the resources that you do, I will be able to make more than 2x the progress.

规模经济意味着，如果我拥有两倍于您的资源，我将能够取得两倍以上的进展。

Hence, next year, I will have eg.

因此，明年，我将有例如。

2.02x the resources that you do.

2.02 倍的资源。

Hence...

因此...

Left: proportional growth.

左：比例增长。

Small differences at the start become small differences at the end.

开始时的小差异最终会变成小差异。

Right: growth with economies of scale.

右：规模经济增长。

Small differences at the start become very large differences over time.

随着时间的推移，一开始的微小差异会变成非常大的差异。

A key pressure that has prevented this dynamic from getting out of hand historically is the fact that we are not able to opt out of diffusion of progress .

从历史上看，防止这种动态失控的一个关键压力是我们无法选择停止进步的扩散。

People move between companies and between countries and take their ideas and talents with them.

人们在公司和国家之间流动，并带着他们的想法和才能。

Poorer countries are able to trade with richer countries and get catch-up growth.

较贫穷的国家能够与较富裕的国家进行贸易并获得追赶性增长。

Industrial espionage happens everywhere.

工业间谍活动随处可见。

Innovations get reverse-engineered.

创新需要逆向工程。

More recently, however, several trends threaten this balance, and at the same time threaten other factors that have kept unbalanced growth in check:

然而，最近，一些趋势威胁到了这种平衡，同时也威胁到了抑制不平衡增长的其他因素：

This all increases the possibility of persistent, and even self-reinforcing and growing, power imbalances between companies and between countries.

这一切都增加了公司之间和国家之间权力失衡持续存在、甚至自我强化和加剧的可能性。

For this reason, I am increasingly okay with stronger efforts to make diffusion of progress something that is more actively incentivized or mandatory.

出于这个原因，我越来越同意加大努力，使进步的传播成为更积极的激励或强制措施。

Some recent policies made by governments can be interpreted as being about attempting to actively mandate higher levels of diffusion:

政府最近制定的一些政策可以被解释为试图积极强制更高水平的扩散：

In my view, the downsides of policies like these tend to come from their nature of being coercive policies of a government, which leads to them preferentially incentivizing types of diffusion that are heavily tilted toward local political and business interests.

在我看来，此类政策的缺点往往来自于其政府强制政策的性质，这导致它们优先激励严重偏向当地政治和商业利益的扩散类型。

But the upside of policies like this is that they, well, incentivize higher levels of diffusion.

但此类政策的好处在于，它们可以激励更高水平的扩散。

Copyleft creates a large pool of code (or other creative products) that you can only legally use if you are willing to share the source code of anything you build on it.

Copyleft 创建了大量代码（或其他创意产品），只有当您愿意分享您在其上构建的任何内容的源代码时，您才能合法使用这些代码。

Hence, copyleft can be viewed as a very broad-based and neutral way of incentivizing more diffusion, getting the benefits of policies like the above without many of their downsides .

因此，Copyleft 可以被视为一种基础广泛且中立的方式，可以激励更多的传播，获得上述政策的好处，而没有许多缺点。

This is because copyleft does not favor specific actors and does not create roles for active parameter setting by central planners .

这是因为 Copyleft 不偏向特定的参与者，也不为中央计划者的主动参数设置创建角色。

These arguments are not absolute; in some cases, maximizing the chance that something gets adopted by truly everyone is worth licensing it permissively.

这些论点并不是绝对的；在某些情况下，最大限度地提高某些东西被真正每个人采用的机会值得给予许可。

However, on the whole, the benefits of copyleft are much greater today than they were 15 years ago, and projects that would have gone permissive 15 years ago should at least think about adopting copyleft today.

然而，总体而言，今天 Copyleft 的好处比 15 年前要大得多，15 年前会放任的项目至少应该考虑今天采用 Copyleft。

Today, this sign unfortunately means something totally unrelated .

不幸的是，今天这个标志的含义完全不相关。

But in the future, maybe we can have open-source cars.

但在未来，也许我们可以拥有开源汽车。

And perhaps copyleft hardware can help make that happen.

也许 Copyleft 硬件可以帮助实现这一目标。