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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?

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?