Interested in Linux, FOSS, data storage systems, unfucking our society and a bit of gaming.

I help maintain Nixpkgs.

https://github.com/Atemu
https://reddit.com/u/Atemu12 (Probably won’t be active much anymore.)

  • 3 Posts
  • 180 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2020

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  • restrictions like that aren’t compatible with the FOSS freedoms

    They are.

    FOSS freedoms are about what you’re allowed to do with the code, not about providing those privieges for free (as in: gratis) to everyone.
    It’s whether the freedoms are attainable at all; in proprietary software, the freedoms are not attainable, no matter how much you pay for it. Paying for the privilege of being granted those freedoms does not stand in direct conflict with FOSS IMV as long as it is reasonably possible to attain them.

    Where it gets complex is transitive freedoms. If I sell you my FOSS program and grant you all the freedoms that includes the freedom to grant those freedoms to others. Such “licensing proxies” are impossible to forbid without limiting essential freedoms of FOSS.

    One possible method that sprung to my mind is to only allow granting the rights on modified copies (“modification” meaning original work atop of the licensed work) or even just the modifications themselves. This would technically restrict an essential freedom but I don’t consider those to be set in stone either.

    It would be extremely difficult to implement this in a manner that actually makes the freedoms attainable and there are tons of complexities in this that I’ve glossed over but I don’t see a licensing model that requires monetary payment in exchange for the freedoms as fundamentally wrong or incompatible with the spirit of F(L)OSS.