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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

261–270 of 509 posts

Re: Bear is now source-available

#261
post #260
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not completely wrong ... how rude. Shareware isn't even open source, generally, and it certainly isn't gratis--you have to pay for it, or at least should, and there are often restrictions or time limits if you don't. Again, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedom, not free beer. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html > “Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughl…

> Shareware isn't even open source, generally, and it certainly isn't gratis--you have to pay for it, or at least should, and there are often restrictions or time limits if you don't. Again, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedom, not free beer. Yes. The comment you are replying to already said this: ‘Free/libre software is distinguished from "gratis" software’. Your earlier comment wasn’t wrong for saying t…

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#262

As far as I understand it, the stance of the 'Open Source' crowd is that if Amazon can't make it one of their AWS offerings then it isn't true open source, and they'll get very upset at you if you claim it is. I'd like to see some recognition from this crowd of the "free-ride competition" problem as this author puts it. What Herman is doing is a service to us all, and we should find a term (better than 'source-availa…

Perhaps a better term would be “limited use open source”

The source is ajar.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#263
post #260
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not completely wrong ... how rude. Shareware isn't even open source, generally, and it certainly isn't gratis--you have to pay for it, or at least should, and there are often restrictions or time limits if you don't. Again, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedom, not free beer. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html > “Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughl…

> Shareware isn't even open source, generally, and it certainly isn't gratis--you have to pay for it, or at least should, and there are often restrictions or time limits if you don't. Again, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedom, not free beer. Yes. The comment you are replying to already said this: ‘Free/libre software is distinguished from "gratis" software’. Your earlier comment wasn’t wrong for saying t…

Copyleft licenses don't even need to be free! All copyleft means is that derivative works must use the same license. For example, the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license [1] wouldn't fulfill freedom 0, since you can't use the material for commercial purposes.

(Granted, Creative Commons licenses are typically not used for software, but the point stands.)

[1] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Re: Bear is now source-available

#264
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the corporations who disallow agpl only do so because they want to comply in a way that is against the spirit of open source. When I advocate for the agpl to prevent Amazon and Google using my software, it’s not because of who those companies are, but how they use it. If Amazon tomorrow turns around and open sources everything that is a derivative work of the code they ever used, I would be more than happy, even prou…

> the corporations who disallow agpl only do so because they want to comply in a way that is against the spirit of open source believe it or not this is not actually true! the corporations who disallow agpl do so because their lawyers (correctly) tell them that agpl-licensed software has not been adequately tested in relevant courts of law, and that by including agpl-licensed software they are opening themselves up t…

I’ve heard this one before and if the agpl were two years old I’d buy it. But they had ample opportunity to craft a better license by now, so at this point it’s hard to believe that’s not just a convenient excuse.

Don’t like the agpl wording, but agree with the spirit? Ok, you have the lawyers, write a better agpl that abides by the same spirit and which you trust.

But: nothing. And waiting won’t change that. It may be also true, but it’s just excuse at this point. They’re not chomping at the bit to introduce networked virality of software freedom into their platforms.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#265
post #60
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People saying wrong things about the AGPL isn't an AGPL problem, it's an issue of people saying wrong things. AGPL allows competition. Any free software license does. It's rule 0 of free software. > it's chosen to to be a non-compete. Well, too bad for them, because I can still fork this AGPL software and compete. So what's the issue? The issue would be for contributors contributing for to this code under CLA seeing…

> Well, too bad for them, because I can still fork this AGPL software and compete. So what's the issue? No legal department will ever allow it due to the FUD. That's the whole fucking point.

The AGPL is supposed to increase user freedom, not the legal department's freedom.

The FSF have never cared even slightly about corporations being happy. Who cares if Google can't enrich themselves further? The point is to protect the users who are free to fork / host the software themselves.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#266
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame on the people who recommend the AGPL to effectively be an OSI-approved source-available license. This is a grievance against the spirit of open source.

AGPL is exactly the spirit of open source. The license used by bear violates freedom 0. AGPL ensures that freedom 1, 2 and 3 are allowed even in hosted services scenarios. Freedom 0 the freedom to use the work Freedom 1 the freedom to study the work Freedom 2 the freedom to copy and share the work with others Freedom 3 the freedom to modify the work, and the freedom to distribute modified and therefore derivative wor…

That is not the spirit of open source, but rather the spirit of free software. The spirit of open source is to effectively have freedom without talking about it.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#267
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta love these are zero-indexed. Written by an engineer for engineers.

Its weirdly incorrect to zero index stuff like this. The zero index refers to the start of the first thing, which is not what numbered lists are supposed to indicate.

If I recall correctly, there were originally three freedoms, but then a fourth one was thought of and put at the front to give it prominence, numbering it as zero as not to disturb the original numbering.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can license their software however they want, but it is worth reflecting on why almost all open source authors go with a permissive license like MIT: because it is basically a "buyer's market." When choosing a database, distributed queue, blogging platform, or whatever, companies usually have a choice of at least several high quality open source options. If one of those options places restrictions on the users…

I disagree. It will be harder to monetize MIT licensed projects, because any competitor can just grab and run. With AGPLv3, at least legally the competitor needs to publish their modifications as well. This in turn makes it more likely the competitor will not use your code, or if they do, in accordance with the license, which would be fine, and users of the product you build will mostly not care, because they don't e…

> It will be harder to monetize MIT licensed projects, because any competitor can just grab and run.

Importantly - any competitor can grab it and modify it to make it easier for them to run at scale and keep those changes closed-source.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#269

Naive. Guy picks a license that allow anyone to do anything they want with his code. Later realizes that was not appropriate when he's trying make money. Changes to an obscure license that on the surface seems to fix the problem. Your options are: MIT / BSD, GPL, LGPL, AGPL. All others are unnecessary and create needless incompatibility.

I don't think Guy really cares. They made their project, and they want the source to be available, and so chose a license that allows for that.
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