zlacker

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?

>>geofft+(OP)
I disagree. Software projects that claim to be free-software instead of opensource (plus use a "contagious" license such as GPL) don't owe you more community management than the ones with an MIT license.

>>knocte+O1
Most high profile project that explicitly claim to be free software in fact do not do any kind of community management at all and do not tend to actively seek outside code contributions.

In fact the community involvement in development as exemplified by GitHub (and SourceForge before that) is to a large extent invention of the same group that started using the term open source (for what is otherwise mostly the same thing as free software).

>>geofft+(OP)
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.

>>thomas+F2
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.)

>>knocte+O1
I'm being a little unconventional with my terms - mostly because the article is titled "Open Source is Not About You." Zach Tellman (a prominent Clojure community member who does not work for Cognitect) just tweeted a link to his post https://medium.com/@ztellman/standing-in-the-shadow-of-giant... about "open source" and mythmaking, which is a much subtler take (and, I'd guess, probably inspired by an older flareup in the Clojure community over governance).

It is, however, the case that open source under the GPL is a perfectly well-defined concept, as is free software under the MIT license. The terms refer to worldviews about the code and ethical obligations, not to licenses.

>>dfox+u2
The software that allows the GitHub style (light-forking) environment is called git, created by Linus. He's a great example of a person who doesn't care about free software ideologies, but cares about open sourcing code a lot.

>>geofft+e3
Even in the world view of free software, regardless of the license being used, no community management is expected from the person that gives away the software they write. Free software is about the rights of the users (not the whims of developers/powerusers). Opensource is mainly just about transparency and efficiency of the development model.

>>knocte+d3
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.

>>lotyri+B5
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

>>robotr+B6
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.

>>robotr+B6
From section 0: To “convey” a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.

>>lotyri+Y7
Thanks for the clarification.

>>knocte+d3
I would argue that the condition that you provide sources to your users is something you owe the author. But perhaps I'm over-philosophical.

>>geofft+(OP)
This is entirely orthogonal. Free software is ideological by design. Rich here is complaining that the culture surrounding open source grew its own ideology, and that it interferes with the very process & value proposition of open source software.

>>xiphia+v3
And still, both his main projects (Linux and git) are under the most “ideological” license, the GPL. And the troubles he’s gone to, in order to keep this state of things in the face of commercial pressures on Linux, are almost biblical.

Linus cares a great deal, he just doesn’t want to be cornered as an FSF zealot.

>>thomas+db
In that case, with MIT you owe the author some credits. (By experience, a lot of people won’t even honor that, even going to the trouble of erasing your copyright notice - literally the only thing they shouldn’t do...)

>>thomas+db
> I would argue that the condition that you provide sources to your users is something you owe the author. But perhaps I'm over-philosophical.

No, I think you're right.

But you only owe it to the author if you're a "distributor". If you're a "user" (=a human who interacts with an application), you don't owe her anything.

The GPL keeps the distinction between the "users" and the "distributors".

This is important, because they have different interests ; They can't both simultaneously have complete freedom to do what they want.

If the "distributors" have the freedom not to redistribute the source code, then the "users" lose their freedom to study and modify the program (or to have it studied/modified by anyone competent - even software companies sometimes hire consultants to modify free software they don't feel like modifying themselves).

Basically:

- the GPL says to the users "do what you want", and says to the distributors "let the users do what they want (which implies: let them have the source code)".

- The MIT says to everyone "do what you want" (I'm omitting the copyright notice stuff here for brevity)

Thus, the MIT blurs this distinction "user"/"distributor" - which is fine, but creates lots of confusion when people try to understand the rationale behind the copyleft (leading to nonsensical reasonning like "there are things I can't do so GPL is less free!").

>>geofft+(OP)
Or I would rather say... Yes, "free software" has an ideological intention, that is, to make the software free for all its users, to protect it from exploitation using a strong license, and eventually leads to some forms of social change in the software world, as in "when we have enough free software, we'll kick out those dirty licenses, ever more, hackers, ever more".

But "free software" itself is only the means to an end, it's a technical and legal tool to accomplish these ideological intentions, and as a tool, it's a collection of code published under a license scheme. When the developers served their duties by providing the source to the users, the work is done. The developers have no responsibilities to implement anything for its users.

On the other hand, if someone writes free software because they wants some forms of social change, in this sense, the intention is not solely developing free software, but to pursuit an ideology though the development of free software. And this is done by a group of people in a community, like Debian, then they must be doing whatever is needed for this goal, i.e. be guided by the needs of the users.

In conclusion, "free software" is not about you, a free software community can be, and often is about you. But it is also legitimate if it's not, in the end, it depends on the community. Some people only care about themselves, some projects just want mainly the software, but may also care about users freedom, some projects want social changes, while others focused on improving the current status of a specific technology. There are overlaps, but there are priorities as well.

>>knocte+O1
Without that contagious license no one would be using Linux nor GCC, and we could all enjoy Aix, Solaris, HP-UX, Tru64, ...

>>geofft+(OP)
Stallman's Free Software only makes the users' interests a priority when those interests are aligned with the ideology.

If the users have interests like, "I want to stick this piece of code into my proprietary program", then those interests are not prioritized.

>>thomas+F2
If you give people someone free code and it deletes their files, you could be liable. That is why software licenses not only have permission-granting clauses but also warranty disclaimers. (Those might not protect you in every jurisdiction.)

>>geofft+(OP)
I think you are reading too much into the term "free software" as GNU was historically[1] no less easier to contribute to than Clojure is today.

The GNU definition of free software (and the 4 freedoms) make it clear that it is about users, but only inasmuch as their private rights to do what they want on their own computers. There is no sense that openly welcoming community patches is something that is involved.

1: It's entirely possible that the community has opened up more recently, but Lucid shipped a fork of Emacs in the 80s for similar reasons to the complaints about clojure today.