[ace_of_spades]

What’s really interesting for me is that you really seem to have a disgust for people trying to add restrictions to “open source” software with the goal of keeping it open but seem to be totally fine with for profit enterprises adding restrictions to software and services, often trying to extract as much value as possible out of you. Doesn’t that seem to be somewhat of an arbitrary double standard?

Why can’t or shouldn’t the “Spirit of Open Source” be able to include exactly the things that you complain about? I would love to hear your grounding for your position :)

[mikedilger]

Adding restrictions to "keep it open" is oxymoronic. Folks can do whatever they want with their software licensing, but please don't deceive people by pretending it's FOSS if it's not.

[webmaven]

Oxymoronic? Perhaps in a strictly literal sense but first of all there are two slightly disjoint goals: Maximizing user freedom, and maximizing developer freedom.

We can maximize user freedom by having developers put code into a commons, reject the freedom-to-restrict-users, and deny other developers the ability to enclose that commons in those sort of restrictions (ala copyleft).

This has an even more broadly applicable analogy, Popper's "tolerating intolerance" and related paradoxes.[0]

Another way of looking at this is through the frame of positive and negative freedoms[1][2] (often described as "freedom to" vs. "freedom from"). It is often not possible to maximize both. For example, when the goal is maximizing human freedoms for the most people, it is not unreasonable to disallow making any people un-free, which includes denying people the freedom to sell themselves into indentured servitude.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/#ConTolPar

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_liberty

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty