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by mkettn 2669 days ago
At least Google and Apple are big contributors to open source software (e.g. Chromium, CUPS). Instead of roasting big companies (because... privacy?) we should work together. This picture does more harm, because it view companies purely as enemies.
3 comments

Open source is NOT free software. You are not free because you are using Chromium instead of Chrome. Free software is a philosophy, Open source just mean every one can read the source.

You can contribute to Open Source and be evil...

Well technically, when you can just read the source, it's not called "Open Source", but rather "Shared Source".
I think the term source-available is more commonly used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software
Chromium is free software, just like the vast majority of open source.

The philosophies are certainly different, but the code produced by one generally fits the other definition as well. MIT, BSD, Apache, WTFPL, etc - all of these licenses fit both the open source and free software definitions.

> At least Google and Apple are big contributors to open source software (e.g. Chromium, CUPS).

…that's a strange choice. Basically every company in that comic contributes in some way to open source.

Contributing to open source is not contributing to free software, the big 5 are indeed all doing quite the opposite: creating walled gardens, trying to monopolize the distribution of software and goods, and pushing for a web monoculture.

Also, they are making the web a more centralist and frankly, boring, place.

"creating walled gardens, trying to monopolize the distribution of software and goods, and pushing for a web monoculture"

...and spying on users.

That's why I said "open source" and not "free software". Those companies do contribute a bit to "free software", but really only in token amounts.
Sensible comment getting downvoted by alarmist HN. What a surprise.