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Comment by msk-lywenn

1 day ago

The source is now readable but it’s not open source at all.

It is open source but not free software.

  • No, it’s source available but not open source. Open source requires at minimum the license to distribute modified copies. Popular open source licenses such as MIT [1] take this further:

    The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

    This makes the license transitive so that derived works are also MIT licensed.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License?wprov=sfti1#Licens...

    • Not quite. You need to include the MIT license text when distributing the software*, but the software you build doesn't need to also be MIT.

      *: which unfortunately most users of MIT libraries do not follow as I often have an extremely difficult time finding the OSS licenses in their software distributions

    • MIT is not copyleft. The copyright notice must be included for those incorporated elements, but other downstream code it remains part of can be licensed however it wants.

      AGPL and GPL are, on the other hand, as you describe.

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  • Open Source is the same thing as Free Software, just with the different name. The term "Open Source" was coined later to emphasize the business benefits instead of the rights and freedom of the users, but the four freedoms of the Free Software Definition [1] and the ten criteria of the Open Source Definition [2] describe essentially the same thing.

    [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

    [2] https://opensource.org/osd

  • It's "source available" [1], not open source [2].

    Words have meaning and all that.

    1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software

    2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

    • > Words have meaning and all that.

      Ironic put down when “open source” consists of two words which have meaning, but somehow doesn’t mean that when combined into one phrase.

      Same with free software, in a way.

      Programmers really are terrible at naming things.

      :)

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