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> Anyway, this is not about definitions. But it is. If people cannot run your software freely, for any purpose, then it is not free software (and that include
by enriquto 6y ago
> Anyway, this is not about definitions.
But it is. If people cannot run your software freely, for any purpose, then it is not free software (and that includes users who are big companies). There's really no way around that. If you are worried that companies may use your software without giving back to the community, the best is to use a copyleft license like GPL or AGPL. You can also dual-license your software as AGPL/proprietary, and sell proprietary licenses at different prices according to the client. This is a fairly common setup, and many companies appreciate it (the only issue is that all external contributors to your project must surrender their copyright to you).
- amelius 6y agoCorrect. It's FOSS. But for companies it is OSS. In other words, it's free software. But for big companies not free as in beer. Perhaps you should explain your objections against big companies paying for open-source software? That would be more helpful than focusing on whether it's called free or not, or on how organizations defined things in the past. GPL isn't always adequate because some OSS authors might want their software to help entrepreneurs bootstrap their businesses.
- enriquto 6y ago> Perhaps you should explain your objections against big companies paying for open-source software? My own objection is against non-free software. It's alright that companies pay for software. In my experience big companies are really happy to pay for free software (regardless of its license), as long as they can steer the software towards their needs, have an assurance that development does not break their tests and use cases, etc. The GPL has no provision against entrepreneurs using it for bootstrapping their businesses; I do not understand your remark in that sense.