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by greggman2 2449 days ago
It doesn't seem like aesprite is open source

https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite

The source is available but the license seems to say you must pay for a copy and that while you can download the source and compile you can not distribute what you make, custom compiles for personal use only.

It does look like a great program though and I'd happily pay the $14.99 they are asking if I was in the market for a pixel editor

1 comments

Technically, it is Open Source, in the sense that the source code is available to the public.

It is not, however, free software [0]. It also probably fails the official Open Source Definition [1].

[0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html [1]: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

It's not Open Source in the same sense that Unreal Engine is not Open Source. Apparently the term "source-available" license is used to describe software you can access the source but don't have permission do use it freely the same ways as "open source".

Aesprite was open source until 2016 thoughs so maybe the reason it's on the list is the list was created before 2016.

https://www.aseprite.org/faq/#if-aseprite-source-code-is-ava...

The term for this situation is usually "Source-available software": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software