Comment by danlitt
17 hours ago
Giving the users source code and no rights to do anything with it really doesn't give them very much. Software freedom advocates are not just nerds who really enjoy reading source code. The point is that if you have the source code and the right to change it then you take control of the activity the software is doing, or helping you to do. If you don't have control, being able to read the source code is not very useful.
Well certainly there is some reasonable middle ground between everything and nothing, which is presumably what licenses like this one are trying to explore? People are afforded rights beyond just looking at it, they can run it, modify it, learn from it, there's just some specific things that are carved out (to my understanding as a layperson).
Every major voice that I've seen comment on this thus far seems to acknowledge the value and the rationale behind the license, they're just saying you can't call it open source.
Would you say that the "free software" and "open source" movements are largely synonymous? I guess I thought free software was a more strict subset that has the "all or nothing" philosophy centered around truly "free" software. Which is honorable and commendable. But is there really no room for stuff that's a little more gray area? I get the rug pull, I get that it's not truly owned by the community, but it still seems like a useful ally and a step in the right direction from fully closed source. With support there could be norms and culture developed to safeguard from bad behavior.
The context of what the software does should also be taken into account. The best arguments I've seen in this thread revolve around the idea that you can trust that you can pull an "open source" library into your project without hesitation. That is a beautiful "free as in libre" building blocks vision. But the software in question here is a completed end-user product. It's not ever intended to be used in another project. But they want to make some kind of good-faith effort to share and be more "open" than normal proprietary SaaS. Instead of this being a good thing it's a huge drama because it's not enough. At least that's my read.