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[return to "Open Source is Not About You"]
1. geofft+S8[view] [source] 2018-11-27 01:58:53
>>jashke+(OP)
This is an excellent depiction of the distinction between "free software" and "open source" as ideological frameworks. As licensing schemes, they're the same - but open source ends at the licensing scheme, as the author correctly points out. If you want to use it for a side project, great. If you want to use it to make money, great. If you want to use it to commoditize the operating system for your worldwide advertising infrastructure, great. If you want to embed it in your iOS app or in iOS itself (and the license permits doing so), great.

The free software movement, however, says things like this (from https://www.debian.org/social_contract ):

Our priorities are our users and free software.

We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities.

We will give back to the free software community.

In other words, free software is about you.

I would quibble with the claim that the open-source process is what produced Clojure in the first place. The open source movement has benefited from sailing in the same direction as the free software movement and using the same tailwinds. Without the free software ethos (which was behind GNU as well as a lot of the Lisp work at MIT), would Clojure have been able to stand on the same shoulders, and would it have attracted the community of users and the ecosystem of libraries it has?

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2. thomas+xb[view] [source] 2018-11-27 02:32:23
>>geofft+S8
This is why my code is licensed MIT. It is a gift, you owe me nothing, I owe you nothing. It might not work, it might not compile, it might delete all your files.
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3. knocte+5c[view] [source] 2018-11-27 02:39:50
>>thomas+xb
I could have written the same last sentences as you, but using a GPL license. No difference. Licensing is not related to this. (PS: When you choose "GPL", if someone modifies your software, they don't "owe" you those modifications; they only owe those modifications to their users, and only in case they have users. Again, no community-management here involved, just distributing the sources.)
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4. lotyri+te[view] [source] 2018-11-27 03:12:24
>>knocte+5c
And only if their users receive a copy of the software in the process of using it. Source: Myself, who slings lots of technically-GPLed proprietary code in the form of network-accessible software like websites so never sees the light of day outside the customer's private repos.
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5. robotr+tf[view] [source] 2018-11-27 03:27:28
>>lotyri+te
Users must be able to readily obtain a copy of the source code. They don't have to receive it.

GPLv3 Section 6 d: "Convey the object code by offering access from a designated place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no further charge. You need not require recipients to copy the Corresponding Source along with the object code."

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

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6. lotyri+Qg[view] [source] 2018-11-27 03:47:39
>>robotr+tf
No, I mean, if the "users" are on the other end of a socket and never receive any copy of the sofware (in any form) then they don't get the entitlement to the software in code form either. It's the problem AGPL was designed for.
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