Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bunderbunder 2806 days ago
Not even just money.

Part of why I originally used the term "non-amateur" instead of "professional" when I described people who shouldn't work under that definition is that, while students and maintainers of open source projects might not be getting paid for what they're doing, they still have compelling reasons to be more careful about licensing.

One worst-case scenario for a student might be that some software licensing snafu threatens their academic work, and, by extension, their whole career. And open source project maintainers have an ethical responsibility not to get users of their work into legal hot water.

For those people, falling in line with OSI offers a huge advantage: You can't avoid crossing the software licensing legal tightrope. But, by sticking to working with OSI-approved licenses, you can at least ensure that you're working with a net.