i have questions about copyleft

one of the frequent justifications for GPL-style licenses over MIT-style ones is that they prevent some type of, as far as I can tell, "enclosure"

GPL proponents describe a scenario in which a non-GPL-licensed project can be "taken" by a commercial organisation and made proprietary

I do not understand how this can happen, or how the GPL prevents it

@aeonofdiscord Well, they can't take the existing code and make it unavailable, but they can reap the benefits of the existing code, and then can add their own proprietary alterations. :/

@Angle I guess I'm not super clear on a) why this is a problem (and who it's a problem for), and b) how it practically differs from using entire GPL software products as part of a stack that includes proprietary software

like, why is the process boundary so important

@aeonofdiscord because then someone could take an open source project, make a new version thats closed source, and outcompete the open source version. Like, suppose someone made a closed source version of mastodon, cut out the federation, added new features, and then went on to become the next twitter, repeating all of twitters bad behaviour? :/

@Angle well, I mean, we saw how well that went down

but I'm unconvinced that twitter's bad behaviour has much to do with their ownership of the Twitter software; in fact, large parts of Twitter are themselves open source. capital and infrastructure are more important imo

@aeonofdiscord Aye, I agree with you on that. But that's no reason to make their things any easier for them. :/

@Angle I guess I don't think the GPL has much of an effect on that - particularly with server software, the fact that every web service is built on a huge stack of processes with varying licenses means GPL or AGPL don't present any practical barrier to any bad actor using free software for nefarious purposes

whereas those licenses do prevent individual software producers/small ISVs (like gamedevs) from reusing certain software in their own products

@Angle (sorry, I don't mean to go off, I've just been thinking about this a lot)

@aeonofdiscord No, you make a good point - it's important to know what you're sticking your license on, and what effects that might have down the line. And sometimes it's better to not use a GPL. :/