5 ms·

Being business-friendly is not a goal, and shouldn't be a goal.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Being business-friendly is not a goal Sure, it is, for lots of people. Even, apparently, the FSF, hence the reason non-consumer products are not subject to anti-tivoization rules in GPLv3.
- milesrout 10y ago
  Being business-friendly is not and should not be anyone's goal in licensing software. Being business-friendly is shit.
  - fauigerzigerk 10y ago
    In my opininon, any particular license can only be friendly or unfriendly towards particular business models but not towards business in general. Some businesses feel threatened by some open source licenses and other businesses are using the same open source licenses to do the threatening. The funding for many important open source projects comes from global corporations that use it as part of their strategy, sometimes dominating entire industries based on open source. A large number of small consulting businesses are based entirely on open source software as well. Open source is not meant to be anti-commercial, nor would that make any sense, because "commercial" is what most of us do to make a living. That is not what takes away anyone's freedoms. What does take away many freedoms is the fact that none of the widely used open source licenses fulfill their original purpose. Linking rights to distribution once meant that users of the software got those rights. Now, in the age of the data center, end users get no rights at all and software can be modified freely by those who run the data centers without granting anyone access to those modifications. Software has become more opaque than it has ever been before since the dawn of the PC age. Even without access to source code we had more control over Microsoft Excel than we now have over anything that runs in a data center, regardless of whether it is nominally "open source" or not.
    - NoGravitas 10y ago
      As to your last point, this is what the AGPL is intended to solve.
      - fauigerzigerk 10y ago
        I know, but almost no one uses it.
  - mankash666 10y ago
    "Being business-friendly is shit". --> Who pays your bills mate? Fairies or a business who employs you, pays you a salary and you know, the inherent Darwinist biological urge to move up the food (value) chain to survive built into all living beings?
- petre 10y ago
  I wonder why the BSDs haven't caught on for embedded appliances and phones while Linux did with a more restrictive and less business friendly license. Sure some companies like iXSystems and Juniper adopted BSDs, but the vast majority used Linux.
  - galacticpony 10y ago
    The manpower behind Linux is superior. Not sure if it's the "vast majority", but for many business cases following the GPL(v2) rules simply is not a problem. Both the PS4 and the Nintendo Switch run on FreeBSD, by the way.
    - gribbly 10y ago
      >Both the PS4 and the Nintendo Switch run on FreeBSD, by the way. Not exactly from what I've read, the PS4 runs 'Orbis OS' which is based upon FreeBSD 9, meanwhile the Nintendo Switch is using the network stack from FreeBSD, but also stuff from Android and the custom OS they wrote for 3DS.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Linux was available under a free license earlier (and alone) and as such developed a huge lead in community that no free OS has caught up with; that has quality, choice, and skill availability impacts that generally dwarf licensing issues for businesses.

> Being business-friendly is not a goal Sure, it is, for lots of people. Even, apparently, the FSF, hence the reason non-consumer products are not subject to anti-tivoization rules in GPLv3.

milesrout 10y ago
Being business-friendly is not and should not be anyone's goal in licensing software. Being business-friendly is shit.
- fauigerzigerk 10y ago
  In my opininon, any particular license can only be friendly or unfriendly towards particular business models but not towards business in general. Some businesses feel threatened by some open source licenses and other businesses are using the same open source licenses to do the threatening. The funding for many important open source projects comes from global corporations that use it as part of their strategy, sometimes dominating entire industries based on open source. A large number of small consulting businesses are based entirely on open source software as well. Open source is not meant to be anti-commercial, nor would that make any sense, because "commercial" is what most of us do to make a living. That is not what takes away anyone's freedoms. What does take away many freedoms is the fact that none of the widely used open source licenses fulfill their original purpose. Linking rights to distribution once meant that users of the software got those rights. Now, in the age of the data center, end users get no rights at all and software can be modified freely by those who run the data centers without granting anyone access to those modifications. Software has become more opaque than it has ever been before since the dawn of the PC age. Even without access to source code we had more control over Microsoft Excel than we now have over anything that runs in a data center, regardless of whether it is nominally "open source" or not.
  - NoGravitas 10y ago
    As to your last point, this is what the AGPL is intended to solve.
    - fauigerzigerk 10y ago
      I know, but almost no one uses it.
- mankash666 10y ago
  "Being business-friendly is shit". --> Who pays your bills mate? Fairies or a business who employs you, pays you a salary and you know, the inherent Darwinist biological urge to move up the food (value) chain to survive built into all living beings?
petre 10y ago
I wonder why the BSDs haven't caught on for embedded appliances and phones while Linux did with a more restrictive and less business friendly license. Sure some companies like iXSystems and Juniper adopted BSDs, but the vast majority used Linux.
- galacticpony 10y ago
  The manpower behind Linux is superior. Not sure if it's the "vast majority", but for many business cases following the GPL(v2) rules simply is not a problem. Both the PS4 and the Nintendo Switch run on FreeBSD, by the way.
  - gribbly 10y ago
    >Both the PS4 and the Nintendo Switch run on FreeBSD, by the way. Not exactly from what I've read, the PS4 runs 'Orbis OS' which is based upon FreeBSD 9, meanwhile the Nintendo Switch is using the network stack from FreeBSD, but also stuff from Android and the custom OS they wrote for 3DS.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Linux was available under a free license earlier (and alone) and as such developed a huge lead in community that no free OS has caught up with; that has quality, choice, and skill availability impacts that generally dwarf licensing issues for businesses.