SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
It's increasingly hard to see how software freedom is present in cases when there's no realistic community access to source code. The barriers these days can come from complex codebases that no single mind can grasp or use of open-but-closed models.
As a consequence, OSI receives more complaints from community members about "open yet closed" than any other topic. Companies of all sizes who loudly tout their love for open source yet withhold source code from non-customers generate the most enquiries of this type. When approached, OSI contacts these companies on behalf of the community but the response is always that they are "within their rights" under the relevant open source licenses and can do what they please.
[...] Interestingly it's common that the companies involved obtained the source code they are monetising under an open source license, while they themselves own the copyrights to a tiny percentage of the code. They can be considered to have enclosed the commons, enjoying the full benefits of open source themselves — and celebrating it — but excluding others from collaboration on the same terms.
Source: Is Open Yet Closed Still OK?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by romlok on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:55PM (2 children)
Probably, in a death-and-taxes sense, but I see the current debate more as a realists vs hippies.
The hippies are all about peace and love and sharing and cooperation and community.
The realists see that companies will shit on any community for a buck, so are insisting that all the peace and love in the world is worthless unless you use the law to back you up.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by istartedi on Sunday December 03 2017, @06:18PM (1 child)
I see it as rigid ideology vs. flexibility. A copyleft license is based on the idea that all software should be public, as in public health, public education, etc. There are times when this model works, but there are times when it gets bogged down. If the software is copylefted, you can't pull it out of that bog. It's locked in to being developed at the pace of the commons. Under a BSD model, software that is best developed in public will be until it isn't. If people are upset about BSD'd software being closed with the addition of small changes, they are really getting upset about something trivial. By definition, the changes were small and thus easily duplicated either in public or private. If people are upset about BSD'd code being a small part of a large commercial work or having a difficult change made under closed terms, they are also upset about something trivial because most of the work is somebody else's. They have no right to it. They are just ideologues pining for public ownership over all software.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by romlok on Monday December 04 2017, @04:44AM
Well, that may be the position of Stallman and the FSF, but the existence of copyleft licenses does not in itself imply that all software should be copylefted. A license is a tool, and one should pick what one subjectively considers the best tool for the job at the time.
If someone gets upset about permissively-licensed software being closed at all, I would put them into the "hippy" category (expecting everyone to "play nice" even when they don't have to).