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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the quantum-source-code? dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by NotSanguine on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:36PM

    That's old news. The problem today is hardware. Support RISC-V and other such projects.

    Hardware? We don't need no stinkin' hardware! It was always more trouble than it was worth.

    Hardware is soooo 2004, and completely unnecessary.

    We now live in a software defined world. Software defined hardware, software defined radios, software defined networking, software defined software, software defined donuts, software defined toilets and all the rest.

    Need to take a dump? Spin a docker instance -- no hardware required!

    These days it's VMs hosting containers all the way down in the cloud [xkcd.com].

    Please add additional tropes in replies to this comment. Thank you for your software defined attention.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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