Abstract:
The Asahi Linux project, which is committed to allowing Linux systems to run on Apple's M chips, recently announced that it has begun to move its code repositories to GPL 2.0 or higher licenses. Switching from the MIT license to the GPL license means that the permissive license is tightened. As an open source project, why should the license terms be tightened?
Members of the Asahi Linux project team said that the project exposes the system development process and development branches and uses the very liberal MIT license whenever possible, so that other free software projects such as BSD can also reuse project code.
However, the team has repeatedly found that people use this loose authorization method to try to take over the development results of the Asahi Linux team. These people use AI to obtain code, rewrite it, then delete the source of the code, and then commercialize Linux targeting Apple's M chip.
In some cases, the functional code under development in the developer's personal branch has been directly moved and released, or the code has been rewritten by an AI model to obscure the source of the original code. These problems have prompted the development team to shift to a stricter licensing mechanism.
MIT is a relatively loose open source license that allows others to use, modify, distribute and even commercialize the code under conditions such as retaining copyright and license statements. Modified products can also be released in a closed source manner.
The GPL license has stronger copyright awareness. When distributing derivative works based on GPL code in accordance with the applicable terms, you need to provide the corresponding source code and comply with the corresponding GPL license terms.
The Asahi Linux team stated that the project has begun to convert each warehouse to GPL 2.0 or higher, and future project code will adopt a strong copyleft license. Recipients of versions that have been previously released under licenses such as MIT can still use them under the original license. Newly submitted code and subsequent versions need to check the actual license statement of the corresponding warehouse.
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