alt Hacker NewsI find it odd how we frame fairness in regards to open source software. He licensed his software as MIT. It says anyone can you use it without owing the author anything. So how is it unfair?
To be clear, I think that open source maintainers deserve much more, but I don't understand why we rarely inspect the licenses as the source of the problem.
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If I made 500M$ using an Open Source library and didn’t send at least 1M$ to the author, I would be an objectively bad person.
Because there’s a clear mismatch between the value generated from Box2d vs the value the creator receives, and that’s common for open-source in general.
It would be common decency to donate even a small portion of that $500 million, even if the license technically doesn’t require it.
You seem to be confusing what is legally/contractually required with what is fair. Fairness, in general, isn't defined by law or contracts, although some laws try to codify it.
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Well there's this little pesky thing in the MIT license:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
That's what he was asking for, a mention in the credits.