Comment by kstrauser

Comment by kstrauser 4 days ago

18 replies

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IMO, the AI bits are the least interesting parts of Zed. I hardly use them. For me, Zed is a blazing fast, lightweight editor with a large community supporting plugins and themes and all that. It's not exactly Sublime Text, but to me it's the nearest spiritual successor while being fully GPL'ed Free Software.

I don't mind the AI stuff. It's been nice when I used it, but I have a different workflow for those things right now. But all the stuff besides AI? It's freaking great.

dns_snek 4 days ago

> while being fully GPL'ed Free Software

I wouldn't sing them praises for being FOSS. All contributions are signed away under their CLA which will allow them to pull the plug when their VCs come knocking and the FOSS angle is no longer convenient.

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  • bigfudge 4 days ago

    How is this true if it’s actually GPL as gp claimed?

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    • pie_flavor 4 days ago

      The CLA assigns ownership of your contributions to the Zed team[^0]. When you own software, you can release it under whatever license you want. If I hold a GPL license to a copy, I have that license to that copy forever, and it permits me to do all the GPL things with it, but new copies and new versions you distribute are whatever you want them to be. For example Redis relicensed, prompting the community to fork the last open-source version as Valkey.

      The way it otherwise works without a CLA is that you own the code you contributed to your repo, and I own the code I contributed to your repo, and since your code is open-source licensed to me, that gives me the ability to modify it and send you my changes, and since my code is open-source licensed to you, that gives you the ability to incorporate it into your repo. The list of copyright owners of an open source repo without a CLA is the list of committers. You couldn't relicense that because it includes my code and I didn't give you permission to. But a CLA makes my contribution your code, not my code.

      [^0]: In this case, not literally. You instead grant them a proprietary free license, satisfying the 'because I didn't give you permission' part more directly.

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    • therealpygon 4 days ago

      Because when you sign away copyright, the software can be relicensed and taken closed source for all future improvements. Sure, people can still use the last open version, maybe fork it to try to keep going, but that simply doesn’t work out most times. I refuse to contribute to any project that requires me to give them copyright instead of contributing under copyleft; it’s just free contractors until the VCs come along and want to get their returns.

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      • setopt 4 days ago

        > I refuse to contribute to any project that requires me to give them copyright instead of contributing under copyleft

        Please note that even GNU themselves require you to do this, see e.g. GNU Emacs which requires copyright assignment to the FSF when you submit patches. So there are legitimate reasons to do this other than being able to close the source later.

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    • carey 4 days ago

      The FSF also typically requires a copyright assignment for their GPL code. Nobody thinks that they’ll ever relicense Emacs, though.

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      • ekidd 4 days ago

        It has been decades since I've seen an FSF CLA packet, but if I recall correctly, the FSF also made legally-binding promises back to the original copyright holder, promising to distribute the code under some kind of "free" (libre, not gratuit) license in the future. This would have allowed them to switch from GPL 2 to GPL 3, or even to an MIT license. But it wouldn't have allowed them to make the software proprietary.

        But like I said, it has been decades since I've seen any of their paperwork, and memory is fallible.

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      • kergonath 4 days ago

        They’re also not exactly a VC-backed startup.

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      • johnny22 4 days ago

        yeah I don't mind signing a CLA for copyleft software to a non-profit org, but i do with a for-profit one.

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    • kstrauser 4 days ago

      In my opinion, it's not. They could start licensing all new code under a non-FOSS license tomorrow and we'd still have the GPL'ed Zed as it is today. The same is true for any project, CLA or not.

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tkz1312 4 days ago

why not just use sublime text?

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