Comment by rpdillon

> Stallmans usage of free software is exactly the same as the rest of the worlds open source.

Not at all, that's why there are separate terms! GNU has an article that's worth reading: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

I'll point out a very practical case. I was once-upon-a-time interested in Nostr, because I liked the relay idea. I looked for a client, and found one called Amethyst. When I installed it, I saw the author had inserted a pop-up on load that had me agreeing to his "Terms and Conditions" for using "the service". But the author had no service...he was worried about his liability if I posted something. Stallman saw this coming! From the article above:

> Third, the criteria for open source are concerned solely with the use of the source code. Indeed, almost all the items in the Open Source Definition are formulated as conditions on the software's source license rather than on what users are free to do. However, people often describe an executable as “open source,” because its source code is available that way. That causes confusion in paradoxical situations where the source code is open source (and free) but the executable itself is nonfree.

> The trivial case of this paradox is when a program's source code carries a weak free license, one without copyleft, but its executables carry additional nonfree conditions. Supposing the executables correspond exactly to the released sources—which may or may not be so—users can compile the source code to make and distribute free executables. That's why this case is trivial; it is no grave problem.

And this is _exactly_ the argument the author of Amethyst makes, check out how he reasons through the additional restrictions: https://github.com/vitorpamplona/amethyst/issues/378

His reasoning is squarely in this weird zone the Stallman wrote about:

> I am confused. Why are we mixing the license with the terms of use? These two files are separate legal matters. The Privacy is used by the Play Store to manage the distribution of the executables. The MIT license relates to the source code only.

> In other words, the MIT license removes any author liability from the misuse of the code. But when the author is also providing the system as binaries (which is an additional service in every jurisdiction I know of), there are many other legal issues that the source code license won't cover.

> And I don't know about you, but I am not comfortable allowing people to use the Play Store version or the FDroid version for these activities written in the Privacy statement. Most of them are local crimes that should not happen anyway.

> This has nothing to do with the source code license, which people can still download, compile and use in nefarious ways.

Anyway, my point is, in practice, there's a million ways to water down "open source" to remove user freedoms, and the value of Free Software is that it keeps the focus in the right place to avoid falling victim to those tricks.