zlacker

Isn't that exactly what the free software movement is based upon? You can only use our software if you agree to share your source code modifications with the binary (death to proprietary software, very ideological) and you can only contribute if you agree if that.

>>danhor+(OP)
The free software zealots are a tiny fraction of the open source community.

>>danhor+(OP)
> Isn't that exactly what the free software movement is based upon? You can only use our software if you agree to share your source code modifications with the binary (death to proprietary software, very ideological) and you can only contribute if you agree if that.

"Well, you see... just keep all politics out of FOSS except for the important FOSS ones I agree with" ;)

>>danhor+(OP)
but free software and open source aren't the same movements and don't have the same ideologies. There's some overlap, sure.

Given that Nix is LGPL 2.1 and Nixpkgs is MIT, the project leans more towards the open source camp than the free software camp.

>>danhor+(OP)
Exactly. Source with caveats has long been a celebrated part of open source. I find it entirely understandable that some people are not happy with contributing to the project if their contributions go towards producing weapons. Anduril could have made an anonymous donation, but they specifically wanted the publicity. They have had employees asking to hire people to "fill the gap" left behind by people who have decided to move on due to the lack of stance in disapproving of Anduril's sponsorship. This has always been more than "I don't want them to use it" and quickly has become a takeover of the community due to how their employees and others have been pushing the policy decisions.

>>danhor+(OP)
>I've stated above some parts of my views about certain political issues unrelated to the issue of free software—about which of those activities are or aren't unjust. Your views about them might differ, and that's precisely the point. If we accepted programs with usage restrictions as part of a free operating system such as GNU, people would come up with lots of different usage restrictions. There would be programs banned for use in meat processing, programs banned only for pigs, programs banned only for cows, and programs limited to kosher foods. Someone who hates spinach might license a program to allow use for processing any vegetable except spinach, while a Popeye fan's program might allow only use for spinach. There would be music programs allowed only for rap music, and others allowed only for classical music.

>The result would be a system that you could not count on for any purpose. For each task you wish to do, you'd have to check lots of licenses to see which parts of your system are off limits for that task. Not only for the components you explicitly use, but also for the hundreds of components that they link with, invoke, or communicate with.

>How would users respond to that? I think most of them would use proprietary systems. Allowing usage restrictions in free software would mainly push users towards nonfree software. Trying to stop users from doing something through usage restrictions in free software is as ineffective as pushing on an object through a long, straight, soft piece of cooked spaghetti. As one wag put it, this is “someone with a very small hammer seeing every problem as a nail, and not even acknowledging that the nail is far too big for the hammer.”

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed...

>>dzogch+o
My understanding of your comment is that "free software zealots" are people who belong to the "free software movement" [1]. If that's correct, where did you get the impression it's "a tiny fraction of the open source community"? This article [2] from 2022 states that 22% of software project have a copyleft license. Is that a fraction you'd deem "tiny"?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_movement

[2] https://www.mend.io/blog/open-source-licenses-trends-and-pre...

>>danhor+(OP)
No. e.g. BSD is considered Free Software despite no such requirements. Free Software is software that the user controls instead of controlling the user. If you publish code with no stipulations at all, it is Free Software. It is only when you place requirements on the user that it might become unfree. In fact there are plenty of Free Software licenses that are incompatible with the GPL.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html

>>danhor+(OP)
Let me translate GNU for you "The only limitation is that you are not allowed to make the software less free/libre aka you are not allowed to add "limitations".

GNU developers give you some software, you can do whatever you want except making it less free.

the only people that will complain are developers that would like to remove soem of the user freedoms , because this devs want to make money or because they want more freedom for themselves and not for the users.

>>danhor+(OP)
the term you’re looking for is “license agreement”

>>salvia+n3
I'm a free software advocate, but I'm not a free software zealot. I think nonrestrictive terms of use is the only way to remain ethical. However I'm also a pragmatist and understand the value and use of non-free software. Zealots famously allow for no such exceptions.

Another example There are a number of "rust zealots" who believe it's a moral imperative to rewrite all software in rust, and any who disagrees is immoral and acting in bad faith. Similarly the number of people who are rust zealots are a small fraction of those who like and advocate for rust.

>>danhor+(OP)
There is a very narrow set of restrictions that is generally agreed upon for it to be free software still, and that restriction is generally to the effect of "you can't remove other peoples rights".

That seems extremely different than targeting particular company for idealogical reasons and trying to remove their rights.

>>danhor+(OP)
No, its exactly the opposite actually. You're thinking of copyleft. The Free Software movement was a direct response to corporations attempting to restrict what users could do on their own computer via dumb terms of service agreements. It guarantees 4 fundamental freedoms:

>The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

>The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

>The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).

>The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms

>>Hideou+S2
People want them not to be advertised at official Nix events, not to bar them from using it. That wauld be impossible due to licensing so isn't on the table.

Would you require the FSF to accept a sponsorship from anyone and to advertise them in return?

>>Pareto+M
Yes, when you scope a movement to just the thing it's about, you'll get a greater intersection of people who can agree on those ideals (i.e. actual intersectionality). If you check https://stallman.org/ you'll see that he's very opinionated on politics, probably moreso than almost all people (he has multiple things he writes about across the world every single day going back decades and maintains a list of assorted topics that mostly have nothing to do with software where he thinks we should change the law[0]. He's encouraged many boycotts over the years, and goes way further than most people to stick to them), but he wisely kept that movement focused on the thing it was supposed to be about, and in doing so was able to actually accomplish something.

[0] https://stallman.org/there-ought-to-be-a-law.html

>>nallla+68
Should Microsoft be allowed to sponsor the next FSF convention?

Fuck no

>>danhor+(OP)
Only in a very limited sense. Look up what happens when you try add a restriction of "You can't use this software for evil", or "You can't use this software to make nuclear weapons" to OSS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#Software_lic...