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Bear is now source-available

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: Bear is now source-available

#481

Post by me-vs-cat »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #475
Jensson wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The GPL is meant to be viral But that also makes people not wanna bother with it. People in the middle who doesn't care either way will be very apprehensive of putting in a license virus in their project.

You should always know what patents and licenses are part of your project/product.

This is both true and absurd.

True because that's how the system actually works today.

Absurd because monopolies on ideas -- specifically patents and software licenses as mentioned here -- have absurd durations.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#482

Post by jakelazaroff »

F3nd0 wrote: post #472
jakelazaroff wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Is that really the case? I’m not outright disputing this, but with the term ‘copyleft’ originating from the free software movement and all, I normally take it to identify free software which protects the freedoms it grants (typically by extending the terms of its licence to derivative works). I see that a similar mechanism is used by some non-free licences, as you have just shown, but are those really considered ‘cop…

Hm! The Wikipedia article intro explicitly lists the Creative Commons share-alike license condition in its list of "notable copyleft licenses", but later says that "any copyleft license is automatically a share-alike license but not the other way around". So at the very least I guess it's debatable :)

(I'm not sure I would rely heavily on Wikipedia for this — they only use secondary sources and in practice most of their sources will be GNU-related, so the article is probably biased in that direction.)

Re: Bear is now source-available

#483

Post by hyperjeff »

anikom15 wrote: post #467
apgwoz wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…until businesses decided that the GPLv2 was legally risky and businesses started to avoid it.

This is FUD. Some businesses may have a policy of not using GPL software, but all the major enterprises, including Microsoft and Apple, use GPL software.

Apple often goes to great lengths to avoid anything GPL.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#484

Post by anikom15 »

apgwoz wrote: post #474
anikom15 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is FUD. Some businesses may have a policy of not using GPL software, but all the major enterprises, including Microsoft and Apple, use GPL software.

My comment wasn’t written with enough precision. Using GPL software: yes. Totally fine. The rise of Linux and all that jazz. Incorporating any part of GPL software _into_ other products? Pretty much doesn’t happen. Every company I’ve ever worked for has said “do not bring LGPL or GPL software into the codebase.” When it comes to commercial software, be it cloud based, or downloadable, you’re not going to find much th…

Of course proprietary software products aren’t going to bring in the GPL. They literally can’t.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#485

Post by torstenvl »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #418
torstenvl wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is objectively true. AGPL does not meet the definition of free software, because it restricts the use of the software when modified. The FSF pretends this isn't true by pretending that some uses are actually redistribution. However, this is too clever by half. Redistribution has a well-settled meaning, and allowing interaction over a network—unless it involves downloading the software itself—does not meet that def…

Let's grant your definition of "redistribution" for the sake of argument. How does the license restrict your use of any modified versions of the software? Like, what specifically are you forbidden from doing?

Your questions seem to be based on unspoken assumptions.

Are you under the impression that a restriction can only take the form of a blanket prohibition?

Re: Bear is now source-available

#486

Post by me-vs-cat »

> It hurts to have poured so much love into a piece of software to see it turned against you and threaten your livelihood.

I'm confused: how is this their livelihood? I don't see any way to pay them directly nor where they monetize the blogs.

Their pain is real, my question is in good faith, and I explicitly am not disparaging the love they have poured into this project.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#487

Post by lmm »

sunshowers wrote: post #480
lmm wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There isn't a similar degree of legal risk with MPL 2.0, nor with non-copyleft licenses (which is the subject of this subthread, not proprietary licenses) There is a similar degree of legal risk with the overwhelming majority of licenses in use. Yes, using exclusively permissively-licensed software would let you avoid this particular risk - but given that essentially no-one (BSD advocates are, if anything, less scr…

Is your position that the FSF is wrong? If so, why trust the licenses that the same FSF wrote? In general, businesses acquire commercial licenses for proprietary software, which is a kind of derisking.

> Is your position that the FSF is wrong? If so, why trust the licenses that the same FSF wrote?

The FSF says a program that exchanges complex data structures with the covered program "can" be something that requires a license; they don't claim that it always or usually is. My position is that they're correct that it's possible (at least in some jurisdictions) but the risk is low in cases where you're not trying to do a technological end run around something you obviously need a license for.

> In general, businesses acquire commercial licenses for proprietary software, which is a kind of derisking.

Only if the license grants permission to do the thing you're doing! Otherwise you're no better off than if you had no license (and you're worse off than under the GPL, which at least permits you to prepare derivative works freely, only putting conditions on distributing them). Almost every commercial/proprietary license I've seen has a blanket prohibition on preparing or distributing derivative works.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#488

Post by apgwoz »

anikom15 wrote: post #484
apgwoz wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment wasn’t written with enough precision. Using GPL software: yes. Totally fine. The rise of Linux and all that jazz. Incorporating any part of GPL software _into_ other products? Pretty much doesn’t happen. Every company I’ve ever worked for has said “do not bring LGPL or GPL software into the codebase.” When it comes to commercial software, be it cloud based, or downloadable, you’re not going to find much th…

Of course proprietary software products aren’t going to bring in the GPL. They literally can’t.

They _literally_ could.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#489

Post by pabs3 »

account42 wrote: post #420
pabs3 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of FOSS consultancies out there doing fairly well, some linked from the FOSSjobs wiki: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources

Sure but the open source part is mostly incidental to their work. They solve business needs for corporations.

The open source part is usually the whole point, they work solely on open source projects themselves, not deploying those projects for corporations. They work on things like the Linux kernel, mesa, systemd, distros etc.

Re: Bear is now source-available

#490

Post by jakelazaroff »

torstenvl wrote: post #485
jakelazaroff wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's grant your definition of "redistribution" for the sake of argument. How does the license restrict your use of any modified versions of the software? Like, what specifically are you forbidden from doing?

Your questions seem to be based on unspoken assumptions. Are you under the impression that a restriction can only take the form of a blanket prohibition?

No assumptions here! You said that the AGPL "restricts the use of the software when modified", so I'm just asking specifically what the restrictions are.
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