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by marcinzm 727 days ago
The author of the term according to their own account merely coined a new term for the existing concepts covered by free software. Those concepts as of 1998 were:

- The freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs.

- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can share with your neighbor.

- The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

https://web.archive.org/web/19980126185518/http://www.gnu.or...

Those are absolutes that apply to everyone. Period. If you can't release improvements because you are a commercial entity then that means the third freedom is restricted. That means it's not free software.

The FSF also covered the ability to charge for distributing copies as long as those freedoms were not lost in the process:

https://web.archive.org/web/19980126190125/http://www.gnu.or...

These are absolutely not kept by a license such as FUTO that restricts these freedoms to certain groups and certain types of activities.

3 comments

> ... so you can share with your neighbor.

I understand the word "neighbor" and "community" in the narrow, personal relationship, sense.

> The FSF also covered ...

I think FSF's GFDL is general non-free, and all copy left license are discriminative for ideology

I understand the word "neighbor" and "community" in the narrow, personal relationship, sense.
> If you can't release improvements because you are a commercial entity then that means the third freedom is restricted.

You say that as if megacorporations improved open-source software instead of just using it to develop their shitty proprietary software.