13 ms·

Well, it might also be that you actually want many people to be able to use, learn and understand your software freely but you also don't want your software to

Well, it might also be that you actually want many people to be able to use, learn and understand your software freely but you also don't want your software to be installed on a military drone or used to enable a company that is working its employees to death. Not everything is profiteering and marketing.

geofft 8y ago
That sounds great! But it's not open source. Debian, Fedora, etc. by policy do not want to prevent use of their software on military drones or by companies that work their employees to death. You will not convince them to change that policy. Therefore, you need to decide which of those two desires is more important to you: is it more valuable to have people be able to apt install / dnf install your software at the cost of letting it be usable by the military and exploitative employers? It's totally legitimate to decide no, I care more about restricting use of my software, so I'll make packages (or a curl | sh script, or whatever) available on my website and guide people to do that. By all means, go do that, if that's what you want to do. (If your'e actually considering doing this, I would like to try to convince you that a software license is the wrong tool for the job, here. But reasonable people can disagree on whether that's true.)
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  Still open source, but I guess you think Debian, Fedora, etc. are willing to ignore a lot of new open source software with more restrictive licenses and sacrifice some or a lot of their user base in favor of more full featured distros. I don't think this is going to happen. They will change policies and accept the new world.
  - geofft 8y ago
    I do strongly think that will not happen. Debian, for instance, constitutionally requires a 3-to-1 supermajority for a change to its "foundation documents," which include the Debian free software guidelines. The people who would have to vote on this are project members who have already pledged agreement with the existing free software guidelines. There are a lot of people who work on Debian precisely because they personally value the DFSG as it exists today. There have been a lot of attempts at sort-of-free-software-but-not-really licenses over time: see, for instance, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#NonFreeSoftwareLicenses https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#NonFreeSof... . There has been a lot of important software previously released under such licenses, from JSON to code drops from Sun (Java), Microsoft (.NET), and Apple (Darwin). The Linux distros have not included them. Remember that Debian doesn't even ship the gcc man page in the default distribution because it doesn't believe the FSF's own license for that man page is free software. I don't see what is different about today that would make things change. There isn't actually that much new "open source" software under non-OSD-compliant/non-DFSG-compliant licenses. And most of it comes from software that was previously under a compliant license, so for instance Debian and Fedora maintainers have forked the most recent OSD-compliant release of the Redis modules: https://goodformcode.com https://goodformcode.com Remember that every new license - even a new free software license - has an uphill battle because if it's incompatible with existing licenses you can't link software under those licenses or incorporate code under those licenses. There is a strong natural pressure to move to a standard license (or set of mutually-compatible licenses like MIT/BSD/etc.), and we've seen OSD-compliant licenses that are fine but uncommon be dropped in favor of more common ones. That pressure applies much more strongly to code that tries to set itself out as "open source" and is incompatible with every open source license.

geofft 8y ago

That sounds great! But it's not open source. Debian, Fedora, etc. by policy do not want to prevent use of their software on military drones or by companies that work their employees to death. You will not convince them to change that policy. Therefore, you need to decide which of those two desires is more important to you: is it more valuable to have people be able to apt install / dnf install your software at the cost of letting it be usable by the military and exploitative employers? It's totally legitimate to decide no, I care more about restricting use of my software, so I'll make packages (or a curl | sh script, or whatever) available on my website and guide people to do that. By all means, go do that, if that's what you want to do. (If your'e actually considering doing this, I would like to try to convince you that a software license is the wrong tool for the job, here. But reasonable people can disagree on whether that's true.)

zzzcpan 8y ago
Still open source, but I guess you think Debian, Fedora, etc. are willing to ignore a lot of new open source software with more restrictive licenses and sacrifice some or a lot of their user base in favor of more full featured distros. I don't think this is going to happen. They will change policies and accept the new world.
- geofft 8y ago
  I do strongly think that will not happen. Debian, for instance, constitutionally requires a 3-to-1 supermajority for a change to its "foundation documents," which include the Debian free software guidelines. The people who would have to vote on this are project members who have already pledged agreement with the existing free software guidelines. There are a lot of people who work on Debian precisely because they personally value the DFSG as it exists today. There have been a lot of attempts at sort-of-free-software-but-not-really licenses over time: see, for instance, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#NonFreeSoftwareLicenses https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#NonFreeSof... . There has been a lot of important software previously released under such licenses, from JSON to code drops from Sun (Java), Microsoft (.NET), and Apple (Darwin). The Linux distros have not included them. Remember that Debian doesn't even ship the gcc man page in the default distribution because it doesn't believe the FSF's own license for that man page is free software. I don't see what is different about today that would make things change. There isn't actually that much new "open source" software under non-OSD-compliant/non-DFSG-compliant licenses. And most of it comes from software that was previously under a compliant license, so for instance Debian and Fedora maintainers have forked the most recent OSD-compliant release of the Redis modules: https://goodformcode.com https://goodformcode.com Remember that every new license - even a new free software license - has an uphill battle because if it's incompatible with existing licenses you can't link software under those licenses or incorporate code under those licenses. There is a strong natural pressure to move to a standard license (or set of mutually-compatible licenses like MIT/BSD/etc.), and we've seen OSD-compliant licenses that are fine but uncommon be dropped in favor of more common ones. That pressure applies much more strongly to code that tries to set itself out as "open source" and is incompatible with every open source license.