I don’t think i need to explain how it works, should i ?

  • Captain Aggravated
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    174 months ago

    A problem I have with the GPL is it allows corporations and shareholders to use software for free. I would be interested in licensing software I make for commercial use by sole proprietors and other small businesses for free, but charge truly offensive prices to entities that have “investors.” Like, Bob’s wood shop, where Bob, his son Rob, and Rob’s friend from high school Jimmy make butcher block counter tops? They can use my software for free. Microsoft? $600 trillion per seat per minute.

    • eatham 🇭🇲
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      44 months ago

      How exactly do you want it? Publicly traded companiee can’t use it? That would affect small companies too, but being publicly tradable is more likely to make an evil company in the end. Companies over a certain valuation? That would have problems with interest and private companies like valve not having to tell people their valuation. Mix of both is probably best.

      • Captain Aggravated
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        84 months ago

        I would probably list out a series of symptoms of large businesses that don’t qualify for my non-corporate license.

        • The company itself, its owners, executives, board members, employees or any other persons associated with the company has spent more than $100 on lobbying since the invention of the written word. To include a middle manager that worked for the company for 2 weeks, quit, and then later went on to become involved in lobbying.
        • Any executive, board member, manager or such person currently or has ever had a contract that features any clauses that could be described as a “golden parachute.”
        • The company has ever engaged in anti-union activity.
        • The company has ever outsourced jobs overseas because labor in developing countries is cheaper. Hiring outside one’s home country seeking better expertise ie “We contracted with a German machine shop because the sample work they turned in was of better quality” is okay; “We only have to pay Vietnamese teenagers 40 cents a day” isn’t.
        • The company publicly trades stock. That is to say random people mostly stock brokers and banks that don’t actually generate any value for society pays a little money and then expects dividents in perpetuity like ticks getting fat and bloated with the blood of higher life forms. These people may not financially benefit from my work more than I do.
        • The highest paid person who is in any way on the payroll of the company is paid more than 20 times the lowest paid employee.

        That’s probably a good start.

        • eatham 🇭🇲
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          54 months ago

          That’s a pretty good list. I would say for 1 and 4 it should be in the past 50 years, to allow for companies to change. I would also add that anything the parent company or a company owned by the parent company that violates these rules also counts. Also, what is a “golden parachute”

          • Captain Aggravated
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            44 months ago

            A “golden parachute” is basically a clause in the contract of a CEO or other higher up where the company agrees to pay severance benefits. I don’t have a problem with severance pay in general but some of these things are basically "No matter how much I embezzle and defraud, no matter how many people I kill, no matter how much damage I do, I get tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, to the degree of actually incentivizing getting hired and fired as much as possible.