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Your dish isn't vegan though. It may be an improvement over eating meat, but it still creates suffering for living creatures. I don't know why you need so stron
by claudiulodro 7y ago
Your dish isn't vegan though. It may be an improvement over eating meat, but it still creates suffering for living creatures. I don't know why you need so strongly to apply the "vegan" label to whatever your dish is, especially when it seems to involve literally eating "meat" from insects. Just call it "sustainable omnivorism" or something.
- danShumway 7y agoNow take the same reaction you just had, and apply it in the context of Kyle's post. > When I wrote a strong copyleft license for dev tools, the FSF faithful objected. Why wouldn’t a movement best known for dev tools and software freedom want a copyleft license that requires devs using dev tools to make their work free? Because it's not Free software. It may be an improvement over proprietary software, but it's still restricting user freedom. Just call it "Source Available" or something.
- kemitchell 7y agoWhy aren't SSPL, API Copyleft, Parity, CAL, and Icepick free software licenses? GPL restricts my freedom to build and share closed applications with free libraries, in order to prevent the creation of closed software that restricts others' freedom. AGPL restrict my freedom to build and share network applications as closed software with free code, in order to prevent the creation of closed software that restricts others' freedom. Why can't a license restrict my freedom to build closed applications with free dev tools, in order to prevent the creation of closed software that likewise restrict others' freedom?
- danShumway 7y agoThe licenses you mention are not Free Software licenses because restricting what people do with their software (and not just how they share it) violates rule 0. > Why can't a license restrict my freedom to build closed applications with free dev tools, in order to prevent the creation of closed software that likewise restrict others' freedom? It can. If just won't be a FOSS license by the traditionally understood definition of FOSS. For better or worse, the Free Software definition guarantees more freedom around end-user usage than it does around how you distribute software. And maybe you think that's an arbitrary distinction. That's fine. You can build anything you want. You could build your own "Software Equality" or "Extended Copyleft" movement, or whatever you wanted to call it. Maybe it'll be even better than FOSS. The only thing you can't do is confuse people by calling your licenses something that they're not. Nobody is upset that SSPL, API Copyleft, Parity, CAL, and Icepick exist. They're all fairly interesting licenses. I'm glad that they exist. Just stop trying to co-opt a movement and blur lines that have been clearly understood for years.
- kemitchell 7y ago> It just won't be a FOSS license by the traditionally understood definition of FOSS. For better or worse, the Free Software definition guarantees more freedom around end-user usage than it does around how you distribute software. I appreciate your frank admission of the distinction, but I have yet to hear a good defense of it that both rests on something other than "that's the way we said it is" and doesn't trap GPL or AGPL. The understanding you describe exists, but I can't agree that it's broadly shared or accepted. If there's a tradition, it belongs to a very narrow tribe. That tribe isn't growing particularly fast precisely because its tenets are so esoteric and don't stand up to typical hacker interrogation by those not thoroughly marinated in the political history. That's the "byzantine, insular ideology of copyleft" I mentioned in the blog post. > The only thing you can't do is purposefully confuse people by calling your licenses something that they're not. I can call it open, and I do. Folks may hear both your view and mine, but the result isn't confusion. It's a choice. There is no proprietary right in the terms "free software" or "open source". And there is no good reason for those presently ill served to pretend those ill serving them enjoy such a right. When a better mousetrap comes along, the designer of the last model doesn't get to pull the words "mouse trap" out of the newcomer's mouth. As in software, so in licenses: lead, follow, get out of the way, or get run over. When I follow my people to a license problem, I try my best to lead with solutions. > Nobody is upset that SSPL, API Copyleft, Parity, CAL, and Icepick exist. I'm glad to hear you say so, but I've received lots of feedback from people who are upset. And not just because "license proliferation". Have a look at the OSI license-review archives ... though I don't generally recommend that. > The licenses you mention are not Free Software licenses because restricting what people do with their software, and not just how they share it, violates rule 0. Making changes and building applications are things that people do with software, ways that people use software, in common parlance. The only folks I know who want to split that hair aim to defend FSF's free software definition. That definition was largely a post hoc rationalization designed to alleviate the cognitive dissonance between the increasingly libertarian, permissive bent taking over open source ideology via OSI/ESR and the overt prescriptivism of GPL. OSI revels in permissionlessness and an idealized, rules-free environment. GPL is full of rules. It was politically expedient to draw a line around GPL and say "no rules, except these rules, because we need these people as allies". Not rigorous. Not otherwise coherent. > Just stop trying to co-opt a movement and blur lines that have been clearly understood for years. That movement hasn't moved in some time. The initiative is out of initiative. There is no widespread understanding of the details we're discussing. We are both rarefied wonks. The movement you seem to think I'm coopting was itself coopted. Open source "won" by giving software freedom to developers who don't pass along to end-users in turn. I don't apologize for writing copyleft licenses that eschew the compromises of the earlier forms. Especially in light of their performance to date.
- Bartweiss 7y agoI don't know why, but this argument seems to be perennial when it comes to FOSS. It's not just from the copyleft side; the recent Commons Clause debacle read something like "to keep our software free, we're going to sell proprietary access to it a little bit". I understand the central complaints that it's hard to keep the lights on writing FOSS, and that when FOSS isn't winning, ideological purity can marginalize it where compromises might do more good overall. But those discussions aren't helped by a baffled "why don't you just accept this?" framing. Disputes like the one between FSF and OSI are explicit about acknowledging and analyzing the tradeoffs between approaches. Nonspecific "FOSS isn't winning!" arguments instead rely on the dodge of "we need to do something and this is something", without stopping to justify what's being changed or why.