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You're dancing around the issue. An open-source license is not allowed to distinguish between use by a hobbyist, a small business, and a multinational megacorp.

You're dancing around the issue. An open-source license is not allowed to distinguish between use by a hobbyist, a small business, and a multinational megacorp. If your license restricts commercial use then it's not an open-source license. The Prosperity Public License restricts commercial use, therefore it is not an open-source license. You can't wordsmith your way out of this.

antt 8y ago
If you want to get picky with words, open source is actually a subset of free software, a rather inconsequential part of it since all GPL licensed software is free software first and foremost. It started as a way to sell Linux to companies that didn't like Stallman. That you're trying to define away that history to people, such as myself, who were there when it happened and are still deeply ambivalent about the choices made is extremely disingenuous.
tannhaeuser 8y ago
I think you're talking past another here. What is or isn't open source isn't the matter. OSI haven't prevented oligopoles from forming and locking people in to "the cloud" by making software a commodity, nor have they prevented GPL'd software (Linux) to become giant spyware in the form of Android, nor have they prevented software to be weaponized for other forms of monopolization (eg. Webkit based on KHTML). All the while original developers don't see any financial benefit to sustain further development. I doubt those outcomes are what the developers had in mind, or are in fact in the public interest. You can pontificate all day about OSS ideals dogmatically; just don't think that makes the world a better place. There is very much a need to express acceptable licensing and nuance beyond the current copyleft/non-copyleft dichotomy. And as discussed elsewhere in the thread, AGPL might not be the answer since it hasn't stood in court (and there are good reasons it won't), and anyway doesn't express whether you care more about receiving patches/PRs, or licensing royalties for commercial/unrestricted use when that is obviously something that many want to see expressed.

antt 8y ago

If you want to get picky with words, open source is actually a subset of free software, a rather inconsequential part of it since all GPL licensed software is free software first and foremost. It started as a way to sell Linux to companies that didn't like Stallman. That you're trying to define away that history to people, such as myself, who were there when it happened and are still deeply ambivalent about the choices made is extremely disingenuous.

tannhaeuser 8y ago

I think you're talking past another here. What is or isn't open source isn't the matter. OSI haven't prevented oligopoles from forming and locking people in to "the cloud" by making software a commodity, nor have they prevented GPL'd software (Linux) to become giant spyware in the form of Android, nor have they prevented software to be weaponized for other forms of monopolization (eg. Webkit based on KHTML). All the while original developers don't see any financial benefit to sustain further development. I doubt those outcomes are what the developers had in mind, or are in fact in the public interest. You can pontificate all day about OSS ideals dogmatically; just don't think that makes the world a better place. There is very much a need to express acceptable licensing and nuance beyond the current copyleft/non-copyleft dichotomy. And as discussed elsewhere in the thread, AGPL might not be the answer since it hasn't stood in court (and there are good reasons it won't), and anyway doesn't express whether you care more about receiving patches/PRs, or licensing royalties for commercial/unrestricted use when that is obviously something that many want to see expressed.