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by SwellJoe 4032 days ago
This is nice and all, but...the mere fact that SourceForge, an Open Source community site, ever thought it was even close to OK to intentionally distribute malware to anyone under any circumstances (whether with the permission of the developer, or not). AFAIK, by calling themselves and Open Source community site, SourceForge has opted into an ethical obligation not just to their developers who build the software but the entirety of the Open Source software community to protect their users from malicious code.

This episode was indicative of a severe loss of direction and guiding principles.
2 comments
bigiain 4032 days ago
" … SourceForge has opted into an ethical obligation … "

Well they haven't - but they're certainly happy to laugh all the way to the bank on malware distribution payments while people assume they're "ethical" from their word-choice and propaganda…

Reputations catch up with that eventually though - I doubt Sourceforge is very far from being a doubleplusungood sarcastic misnomer - the Minitruth of Open Source...

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hrnnnnnn 4032 days ago
This is where the distinction between "Open Source" and "Free Software" actually matters.
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jrochkind1 4031 days ago
Say more, what do you think the distinction is? I think I know what 'open source' means (any software released under a license that complies with OSI's definition of open source[1]), but I'm not sure what you mean by 'free software' and the distinction.

[1](http://opensource.org/osd)

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hrnnnnnn 4031 days ago
I'll leave it to Stallman: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

But simply - "“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community." This carries with it ethical obligations that Open Source software does not.

In the extreme case, you could have Open Source pacemaker software which kills you if you don't keep up your payments, but the same thing would not be Free Software.

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