---
title: "Post-GPL philosophy for open source"
date: 2026-02-23
canonical: https://solmaz.io/x/2025727652250730918/
x_url: https://x.com/onusoz/status/2025727652250730918
license: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
---

another thought i'm having these days is that we need a new philosophy of free software (as in freedom), or an update to it

the most psychologically imprinting philosophy is stallmanism, and the philosophy of FSF. it is righteous and strict, and i believed it growing up

but GPL and money don't go well together. that's why most of the lasting open source projects today use MIT, Apache and the like. it turns out you can still make a good living with open source. i want to make money, so i never use GPL in my projects

and to add another deadly blow to stallmanism, code is cheap now, virtually free

does this mean stallmanism is dead?

if there is an open source project using GPL that i want to use commercially, i can now recreate it from the original idea and intent completely independent of it (ignoring training data), just like how i can recreate a proprietary service

stallmanism was already long-irrelevant. but does this mean we must finally declare it dead?

code is free now. what does it mean for open source? what replaces stallmanism?

*Part 1/2 of a thread; root: https://solmaz.io/x/2025727652250730918/*
*Quotes a post by @onusoz (https://x.com/onusoz/status/2025711864848511103); its text is omitted here because it is not covered by this site's license.*