I am puzzled after reading this article on #Wired. After all, what is written is not wrong, but is highly critic and makes me question the effective importance of fighting for free software or at least open source

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[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 18 points 2 years ago (3 children)

There is no problem. Open source means anyone can use their software as long as they make their modifications public. If you want to add a term that only agree politically with the author can use the software, that is a completely different concept. And a terrible one, it would just serve to fragment the open source ecosystem into different ideological niches.

[–] pinknoise@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Open source means anyone can use their software as long as they make their modifications public.

Sorry to nitpick, but thats copyleft, not open source. People get those terms confused and I think this is partly on purpose, I've seen official tenderings that said "open source" when I'm pretty sure they were meant to say copylefted/free software.

If you want to add a term that only agree politically with the author can use the software, that is a completely different concept.

There was an attempt to do that with "ethical licenses", and at first I thought it was a good idea because most people probably don't want their software used for weapon systems, surveillance or repression.

Of course the people doing the latter couldn't care less about your license and are never held accountable for anything anyways. But the final nail in the coffin of ethical licenses was when I read one disallowing me to use the code for non-christian purposes :D

[–] Zach777@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago

Tbh people forget that open source just means that you can see the source code. It has no bearing on what you can do with it. There are plenty of projects that are open source that have very restrictive licenses otherwise.

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