SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Joseph Graham has written a very short blog post about software freedom and the direction we might take to achieve it.
The free software movement, founded in the 80s by Richard Stallman and supported by the Free Software Foundations 1, 2, 3, 4, preaches that we need software that gives us access to the code and the copyright permissions to study, modify and redistribute. While I feel this is entirely true, I think it's not the best way to explain Free Software to people.
I think the problem we have is better explained more like this:
"Computer technology is complicated and new. Education about computers is extremely poor among all age groups. Technology companies have taken advantage of this lack of education to brainwash people into accepting absurd abuses of their rights."
Source : The Free Software movement is Barking up the wrong tree
(Score: 5, Informative) by Ramze on Tuesday December 26 2017, @08:52PM (5 children)
No. The license determines what one can do with the software code, thus the license is what one uses to make that determination. The reason the license was chosen makes no difference whatsoever.
RMS likes "free software" as in GPL2, GPL3 because the user can see the code, modify the code, and be held to an agreement to distribute any changes of the code along with the software as well as binding the changed code to the original license. RMS doesn't care about just being able to see code (which is what open source is). Nor does he care about being able to see and change the code without having to distribute the changes (as in BSD and other licenses). RMS is perfectly fine with people selling software as long as the software is under the GPL so that users are free to use it according to the GPL.
Linus only cares about GPL2 code -- his take is that he wants to get changes back, but he doesn't care about the "free software" philosophy of RMS which has gone even further with the GPL3 on restricting usage. So, Linus talks about "open source" -- really meaning GPL2 licensed code and RMS talks about "free software" meaning a whole philosophy regarding computers and code that happens to be reflected in the GPL... which to his mind is now on GPL3... but, Linux will never move the linux kernel to GPL3, so RMS is stuck with HURD or modifying a BSD kernel and releasing it under GPL3.
There are a lot of open source licenses, of course... but even Microsoft refers to a lot of their software as "open source" even though they only let certain people look at it, don't let them make any changes, and would sue them if they ever distributed it. There's no good definition of "open source" which is why RMS hates the term. Just being able to view the source isn't sufficient to have the freedom to do something with it, thus "free software" is the term he chooses for what he proposes.
But, at the end of the day, it's the license that binds one legally for what they can do with the code, not the intent of the author.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @11:35PM (2 children)
Microsoft refers to a lot of their software as "open source"
The correct term is "open core".
In order to run their "open" stuff, you will need to pay M$ for -something-.
Typically, that's a Windoze license at a minimum.
...and any time you go to get their "open" stuff, take note of the PATENTS.TXT file that comes with that.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:55AM (1 child)
No.
"Open core" refers to software whose core functionality is open source, but which also has proprietary additions available. Often such a product is mostly useless for its intended task without the proprietary parts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @06:58AM
We're very close to agreeing.
You say "available"; I say "mandatory".
Without the payware, you can look at the code all you want but it won't be able to actually do anything useful for you.
It's the reason that a new term needed to be invented.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:07PM
There is one pretty widely known definition that I've never seen or heard anyone dispute:
https://opensource.org/osd [opensource.org]
They do have some open source code, yes. And anyone is free to view it and fork it and do what they want with it. The few I checked were released under MIT and BSD licenses, both of which are specifically named as meeting the above definition.
https://github.com/Microsoft [github.com]
I can't find anything that they call "open source" that is restricted like what you describe. In fact, Microsoft representatives have stated in interviews that "open source is more than just releasing the source code", so they definitely know that just releasing source code snippets to a partner under NDA does not at all qualify. Maybe some sales monkey is doing that, but that's definitely not an official corporate statement as far as I can tell.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 27 2017, @09:13PM
No. The licence determines if and how you may distribute the code. It grants additional rights that you wouldn't otherwise have because of copyright (which is still upheld, it doesn't just evaporate).
> thus the license is what one uses to make that determination. The reason the license was chosen makes no difference whatsoever.
That's correct.
> Linus only cares about GPL2 code
The bottom line is that he doesn't care about GPL3, plus the impossibility to change stone soup this far down the line anyway.
> his take is that he wants to get changes back
He *doesn't* particularly want to get changes back. Idiots can change shit all they want, and *he doesn't want it*. He only wants well-maintained working code back. (I'm an ex kernel dev.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves