Comment

I agree with parts about entitlement. The expectation of support and treatment of open source software as if it was proprietary is a real problem.

But, the authour makes a similar mistake - they conflate open source software with source-available (proprietary) software. As an example, I strongly disagree with this part:

When software is open-source, it is open-source, not necessarily free and open-source (FOSS), and even if it is FOSS, it might still have a restrictive licence. The code being available in and of itself does not give you a right to take it, modify it, or redistribute it.

If you replace it with this version, I am happy:

When software is source-available, it is source-available, not necessarily open source or free and open-source (FOSS). The code being distributed under a source available license does not give you a right to take it, modify it, or redistribute it.

I think it’s really important that we keep a clear delineation between free/open source software on one side, and source-available (proprietary software) on the other.

A lot of companies are trying to co-opt and blur the meaning of the term so they can say “seeing the source was always the point, none of the other freedoms mattered”, in order to sell you proprietary licenses.

Open source gives you the right to take, modify and redistribute it. Source available does not. And that’s ok, just please don’t blur the terms together.

even if it is FOSS, it might still have a restrictive license

Likewise, this is definitionally untrue. The whole purpose of FOSS is to give you the four freedoms.

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snowfalldreamland@lemmy.ml ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Maybe it sonds a bit like a conspiracy theory but with how often people make this “mistake” i really believe it’s a deliberate effort to undermine the meaning of open-source

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- sfxrlz@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I think many people fail to wrap their head around the concept since almost everywhere else nothing is really free.
  
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  - entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah, freedom has become vanishingly rare
    
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masterofn001@lemmy.ca ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I once had an argument in another community on here about something very similar. And they told me I was wrong. The mods deleted my posts.

I posted the links and the definition/requirements for FOSS as compared to just open source.

They kept telling me i was talking about open source and not libre.

The links and definitions and requirements I posted:

From Richard Stallman, from the site whose creators developed the rules and requirements for FOSS, GNU.org, and from the itsFOSS site which, indeed, references and links to the first 2.

The definitions also explicitly state the difference and uniqueness of each and compares them to the nonstandard open source (source available) labels.

I unjoined that community and found a less ignorant one.

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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The mods are definitely wrong, and they shouldn’t be deleting posts here. But you could also be wrong, I don’t have the original posts to go off of, but I do have this one.
  
  FOSS is not the same as Free Software, it’s a combination of Free Software and Open Source software, meaning it applies to both. In long form, it’s Free and Open Source Software, meaning it applies to things applying to one or the other, and not necessarily both.
  
  If you mean Free Software (i.e. the FSF/GNU definition), then use that term. If you mean Open Source (i.e. the OSI definition), then use that term. If you’re not sure which you mean, but you know you mean one of the two, use the term FOSS. If you just mean the source is available but it doesn’t necessarily fit the the Free Software or Open Source definitions, use the term “source available” and leave it at that.
  
  Most FOSS licenses are both Free and Open Source (i.e. they meet the definition of both), but not all. Many Open Source licenses are incompatible w/ Free Software licenses, for example the Apache 2.0 license is incompatible with the (L)GPL < v3 in some cases.
  
  In general:
  
  FOSS - preferred when the software is either free software or open source software
  
  source-available - preferred when the software is not FOSS, but you do have access
  
  proprietary - use for either source-available or non-source-available software
  
  Free Software - use when referring to copy-left software (yes, it applies to more, but let’s keep things simple)
  
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  - masterofn001@lemmy.ca ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Go to gnu.org
    
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    sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I linked GNU’s definition of Free Software already.
    
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sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

The code being distributed under a source available license does not give you a right to take it, modify it, or redistribute it.

I would add in “automatically” there. Source-available licenses could give you the right to modify it and redistribute it, or it may not. For example, the Unreal Engine is proprietary and covered by a source-available model, and you can redistribute it to other license holders (must accept certain terms and conditions), and even then w/ restrictions. So you can take it, modify it, and redistribute it, but there are a handful of very important asterists there.

Basically, if you don’t recognize the license as one of the major ones (Apache, BSD, MIT, (L|A)GPL, etc), then treat it as source-available w/ no rights other than reading it until you actually read and understand the license.

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- tabular@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The intent of copyleft is to ensure freedoms for the recipients of derivatives of your works. In software that means the users of forks. Copyleft restricts you to the same license (or a compatible one) to prevent you adding more restrictions. ““More permissive”” software licenses can be redistributed with the same license but often it’s a more restrictive license (e.g. MIT -> proprietary).
  
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  - sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You can’t remove the license, say MIT, or add any restrictions to the code. You can combine it with other works and distribute the combined work under different terms, provided you still abide by the terms of the license (e.g. source distributions need to retain the license, binary distributions don’t).
    
    Copyleft forces modified distributions to have the same terms as the copylefted software. If you have some MIT code and some GPL code and you combine it, the combined work is GPL. Likewise if you combine proprietary code and GPL, the combined work is GPL, and that’d regardless of how it’s distributed.
    
    Permissive licenses protect the source as it was when it was combined into the other work. Copyleft licenses enforce distributed changes to the source are made available under the same license. Which one you want depends on what “freedoms” you want. Do you want the freedom to use the source however you want, including with proprietary code? Then you want a permissive license. Do you want to ensure that any changes to the code are always available? Then you want copyleft code.
    
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    tabular@lemmy.world ⁨26⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    With the minimal amount of work added the combined work can now have added restrictions. They’re pushover licenses.
    
    Devs are free to choose whatever license they want but in the pathfinding problem of interacting with others then “protecting the source” is the wrong target node. Copyleft is a tool to help people.
    
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This2ShallPass@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Yes, just because the source code is available doesn’t mean it is licensed for others to take. However, AI tools that have scraped the web for all of its content won’t see the difference between source available, open source , and free and open source. It is possible that those who use AI tools could be unknowingly using code without the license to do so.

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