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by LexiMax
1064 days ago
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> Stallman and the FSF are hardly darlings of the corporate world I imagine the corporate world is very happy with the FSF, because they represent the most popular non-permissive licenses by a significant margin, and RMS's stewardship of the FSF in the era of GPLv3+ has been an enormous help in the rise of popularity of permissive licenses. > This is something people in this space earnestly believe in, not something they're just being paid by corporations to espouse. I'm not implying that its adherents are influenced by corporations, but that its adherents have seemingly taken its tenants as holy writ instead of critically re-examining them in the context of today's open source landscape. |
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You can imply that all you want but that doesn't make it true. Once you allow the terms to be muddied by usage restrictions you agree with you will quickly find them also used for software with usage restrictions that you don't agree with and soon the terms will be entirely meaningless. The point of open source licenses is that they effectively put the software into the commons (which copyright on its own fails to do) and, in with copyleft licenses, to keep derivatives in the commons as well.
Non-commercial restrictions specifically don't just afect big corporations but anyone who accepts money vaguely related to their use of the software. Accept donations? Do related work for hire? Agree to fix an issue for your friend in exchange for a beer? Accept any kind of reward or sponsorship based on your status from work using the software? Better call you lawyer first to make sure the conditions allow it. More often than not, the answer is going to be "no way to tell until you get sued".