Comment by pseudalopex
8 hours ago
> I will give you shit on, hardline, and selfish - my apologies. I need to slow down.
This was a good step. But you will not admit calling it was loaded to call people who prefer legal clarity ornery?
> That question was motivated by the several comments expressing fears of being sued. I'm curious if there is a pattern of behavior among source available projects driving that, or if it's more just in principle.
A license is a legal document. Its purpose is to communicate when and to fear being sued or not. Source available, closed source, or open source are the same in this context. Have software copyright owners sued license violators? Yes. Treating legal documents seriously is not just principle.
> Fair—but, my point was that, there are people that are trying to do good things for humanity (not talking about DHH here), and open source is trying to do good things for humanity, and I don't know it just sucks to see them at odds and divided. But I do understand better the functional definition of open source and the zeroth freedom, even if it still feels a bit dogmatic to me. Or maybe just a clash between libertarian and liberal ideals.
This was not a conflict between open source and source available. It was a conflict between open source and someone who knew better who used the term misleadingly for promotion.
Dogma to you is learning from history to others.
Libertarian and liberal may be the right words or not. But the impression the different groups have different ideals is correct.
> This was a good step. But you will not admit calling it was loaded to call people who prefer legal clarity ornery?
I did not intend to call the person ornery, I was asking if it was that ornery to them to have to care about getting sued, and pay attention to license terms, basically. This is one area where I think there is a meaningful distinction between libraries and end-user products.
> Treating legal documents seriously is not just principle.
Treating them seriously is one thing, automatically dismissing anything that doesn't provide unfettered rights is another. I understand the high value of that in certain contexts, but should those have claim to all of "open source"?