Comment by madrox

Amazing. Your comment is wrong on every respect.

Whether you are entitled to write fanfic is not a straightforward case. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction documents, some authors allow it, some don't, and fanfic sites pay close attention to who does. The fact that you can write Star Wars fanfic is not entitled under law, it is entitled by implicit or explicit permission from the copyright holder. Star Wars is OK. Pern? Not so much.

Oh, and sometimes you can both write and sell fanfic legally, no matter what the copyright holder thinks. For a famous example, Bored of the Rings is legal because it is marked as parody.

Moving on to open source, you are even more squarely wrong. The definition of open source, as found at https://opensource.org/osd-annotated, in item #6 says that commercial use must be allowed. In other words anyone is free to try to make money off of that open source project they forked as long as they follow the license.

In fact the term "open source" was invented as part of a marketing campaign to encourage the use of free software for commercial purposes. Far from "you can't make money from this", the whole intent was to encourage people to try to make money from it. And seeing that you could, to encourage businesses to make more of it! (This marketing campaign was successful, which is why you both have heard of the term some 20 years later, and everyone uses open source software.)

Now the license may restrict what business models are feasible. For example you can't edit GPL software then sell it as proprietary. But that is a MAY, not a MUST. As an example, selling relabeled BSD software commercially is both explicitly allowed and occasionally encouraged.

You are not entitled to make money off it, just like you aren't entitled to make money off that open source project you forked.

You are absolutely entitled to make money off of an open source project you fork. As long as your fork provides value you that someone is willing to pay for.

> You are perfectly entitled to write that Star Wars fanfic.

Nope. It's a derivative work, and, as such, requires the permission of the people who own the copyright and trademarks.

> You are not entitled to make money off it

This matters less than you may think. There's a four-part test [1], and profit is considered, but the work not being for-profit doesn't make the work legal.

[1] https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107

Here's an old-ish article I like to link to, on Waxy.org, called "No Copyright Intended":

https://waxy.org/2011/12/no_copyright_intended/

> Under current copyright law, nearly every cover song on YouTube is technically illegal. Every fan-made music video, every mashup album, every supercut, every fanfic story? Quite probably illegal, though largely untested in court.

By all means, read the whole thing.

Here's a lawyer's take on it:

https://www.traverselegal.com/blog/can-derivative-works-be-c...

> Image yourself an artist (of any sort) who has drawn such great inspiration from another (copyrighted) work that you would like to modify that work to create something new. Are you allowed to do so? Could you get a copyright to your new creation? As with most questions in law, the answer is: it depends.

> “A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship” (17 U.S.C. § 101) is called a Derivative Work. The original copyright owner typically has exclusive rights to “prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work” (17 U.S.C. § 106(2)). It is considered copyright infringement to make or sell derivative works without permission from the original owner, which is where licenses typically come into play.

Again... make or sell. Not making a profit off the work doesn't necessarily protect you.

There's a huge difference.

The copyright and trademark owners may choose to ignore your little fanfic hobby. (Or they may not.)

In the case of open source software, you can fork it (or not) and--assuming you abide by the license terms--you can do anything you want including making money of it.

And that's the biggest misunderstood concept in free software. "Free" here doesn't mean free of money but freedom. FSF actually encourages requiring money for software.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

Except you absolutely are allowed to make money from open source projects you fork. The only limiting factor is what license you need to provide with it (and potentially give up your new source code), but you can even make money from GPL code.

Isn't your second point precisely part of the difference? With an open source project and an appropriate license, you may very well be able to make money of a forked version of the project.