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Comment by ekjhgkejhgk

25 days ago

I'm not an expert, but I very much doubt this.

The FSF calls it a "free license" [1] and I don't think they would if they didn't make the source code available.

Source code available is necessary but not sufficient for Free software, see [2]

> Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available because studying and modifying software without its source code can range from highly impractical to nearly impossible.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#Expat

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

EDIT Oh sorry, you mean for the LICENSE to be available. Never mind then.

11 comments

ekjhgkejhgk

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PunchyHamster  25 days ago

And you're entirely wrong. MIT just require attribution, not giving the source code.

That is why companies and corpo programmers LOVE BSD/MIT code, they can freely steal I mean use it in their for-profit products without giving anything back but some bit of text hidden in about box

adastra22  25 days ago

You can compile MIT software and distribute the binary while saying “fuck you” to anyone who asks for the source.

You are thinking of copyleft (e.g. GPL)

  • ekjhgkejhgk  25 days ago

    If that were true, the FSF wouldn't call it a free license.

    • lelanthran  25 days ago

      > If that were true, the FSF wouldn't call it a free license.

      It is true; the license gives you the source, to do with as you please, including closing it off.

      Famously, Microsoft included BSD licensed tools in Windows since the 90s and did not distribute the sources!

      And that is completely legal. If you want to force the users to distribute their changes to your open source product when they are redistributing the product, you need to use GPL.