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I think this is a dangerous mode of thinking. The purpose of a license is to outline what rights I have with regards to copying the software (and redistributin

I think this is a dangerous mode of thinking. The purpose of a license is to outline what rights I have with regards to copying the software (and redistributing it). If I have the right to do something, then I ought to be able to do it, even if you request otherwise. Imagine if some corporation licensed their software with the GPL, but then "requested" that you not repackage that software for Windows. Would that be a "healthy response" on the part of the company? I don't think so. The GPL clearly states that I have the right to redistribute modified copies of the software, so long as I make my changes available to others. In this case, the software is licensed under the MIT license. MIT is an even looser license than GPL; a redistributor can take the software, make changes to it, and redistribute the modified version as a closed source binary, so long as they acknowledge the original creator. Repackaging the software is clearly within the rights of the NixOS maintainers, and they've chosen to exercise their rights as defined by the law. To argue that they have some unwritten obligation to respect the wishes of the package author subverts the intent of free software, which is that the software that runs on my computer is mine, to run and/or modify as I wish. If the package author wishes to restrict his users from modifying their software, there is a very simple remedy: release the software under a non-free license that restricts redistribution. The way they're behaving now is an attempt to eat their cake (restrict the way software can be modified and distributed) and have it too (get credit for releasing software under a free software license). EDIT: Swapped out BSD in favor of Windows in my first example, because it seems that people were getting confused between BSD (the operating system) and BSD (the license)

wumpus 5y ago
[Because of the edit above, my comment is no longer relevant.]
- bramblerose 5y ago
  "BSD" can refer to the BSD license, but I think the poster is referring to the operating system here.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I think that is what he meant. What happens when someone created GPL software and then does what this developer does, which is pressure others not to freely use it?
- quanticle 5y ago
  The intent behind my comment and the two examples was to explain that there really isn't any nuance or controversy here. Any attempt to inject controversy, by saying that the NixOS packagers have some kind of obligation to the original package author because he asked nicely is inherently against the intent of free software, which is that once I have the program running on my system, it's mine to modify and redistribute as I please. Sure, the package author can "ask nicely" that I don't redistribute, but I believe in the four freedoms of the FSF, and by golly I'm going to exercise them.
  - wumpus 5y ago
    It would be nicer if you had marked your edit where you made it; it took me a while to notice the postscript. Also, you could have mentioned that you made an edit in your reply. Thanks. I hope next time turns out better.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - soraminazuki 5y ago
    From the looks of it, the upstream author didn't ask nicely too, honest questions from NixOS maintainers were immediately met with mockery.
m463 5y ago
I remember RMS saying that GPL software allows you to USE the software for any purpose. It just governs how you redistribute it, so you pass on the same freedoms you enjoy to others.
abdullahkhalids 5y ago
Look, human society is complex with millions of moving parts. Every law that has ever been written has winners and losers, because it abstracts away many of the details of human behavior and buckets them into simple categories. But just because a law has been written in a particular way, doesn't mean that we forget the intent behind the law, which probably wasn't to have these winners and losers, but it was the best law we could write. People respond to this conundrum in at least two ways. One way is, let's specify even more complex rules and regulations that takes care of the weird cases. The bad thing about this is that it increase compliance costs for everyone, and it only takes care of some cases and never all of them. The other way is to recognize that it's impossible to write perfect laws, so we should take some liberty in interpreting them on a case-by-case basis. The bad thing about this approach is that there is always uncertainty about how your particular case will be interpreted. Usually, both approaches are taken (legislators write ever more complex laws; judges show compassion or come down hard). And this is the correct way to go about it, because it usually allows for fewer winners and losers. But you are advocating that the second way be never practiced, and I don't think that's a good approach. Law is code. And like any piece of code, always has bugs, that need to worked around in the short term, before they are fixed.
- jraph 5y ago
  We are not in unhandled situation territory here though. The license explicitly gives rights the author does not want to be used.
- Nursie 5y ago
  Law is not code, it is little like code, it is interpreted in the light of circumstance and applied inconsistently. It’s very variable and relies on humans, who can show forgiveness and compassion. (Sorry, but of a bugbear with the ‘code is law’ crowd…)
  - abdullahkhalids 5y ago
    That's pretty much what I said. Attempting to treat law as a perfect bug-free code is a fool's errand.
soraminazuki 5y ago
I agree. He granted people rights to use and distribute his software. It's unreasonable of him to attack people when people start using it. I'm well aware there are some complications with open source licensing, in which many businesses profit off free labor without giving anything back. However, this isn't what happened here. This is a case of volunteers working to ensure that Home Assistant would work on NixOS. The upstream author came anyway and demanded that NixOS not use his software, refusing reasoned dialogue and instead throwing thinly veiled insults. If many consider this acceptable, then the purpose of open source licensing would become moot. I'm glad this doesn't seem to be the case here.
- Proven 5y ago
  > I'm well aware there are some complications with open source licensing, in which many businesses profit off free labor without giving anything back. How is that a "complication"? That's exactly how it's supposed to work - it's gratis and you may be able to "profit" (benefit) from using it for free.
II2II 5y ago
If it was a dangerous mode of thinking, then any request of support from the author is also a dangerous mode of thinking. After all, from the MIT license: 'THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED'. The author simply made a request, with the full realization that it was nothing more than a request given the license they had used. They are also far from the only only one to exhibit a similar attitude. I recall GNU being antagonistic about the distribution of Emacs under Windows in the past. Given their association with the GPL, that antagonism can be viewed as more of a statement than a request.
- geofft 5y ago
  Right - there's two parts of "open source" as the term is commonly used, open source as in the license, and open source as in the community. We look skeptically on companies whose "open source" involvement involves dumping code that works for them and not accepting contributions or responding to questions and not participating in upstream communities. We talk about being a good open source citizen because we have an analogy to the real world, where being a "good citizen" is more than merely following the law. We have opinions about codes of conduct (whether for or against) even though those don't affect the license at all. We talk about an open source sustainability crisis even though all the code that's been released so far isn't danger of disappearing. Maybe we need another term for it, but for now, the term as it is used in practice both refers to the licensing regime and the community and culture around it. The idea that projects have maintainers in the first place and aren't just released anonymously to the commons, and moreover that it's reasonable to contact the maintainer if you have a problem to report or an improvement to suggest, is a significant part of what defines the open source community, even though the term "maintainer" appears in no license (except the LaTeX one, which adds some obligations around non-maintainers marking modified copies which is called out in the DFSG as a compromise not to be encouraged). Frankly, it seems to me that the author in question just wants to stick by the license: they want to release the software and not be contacted about it by people who receive it from redistributors. That seems reasonable to me, in the abstract. The hard part is reconciling that with the norms of the community.
  - jltsiren 5y ago
UncleMeat 5y ago
Yes and no. What is legal, what is ethical, and what is socially acceptable are all different things. Licenses only cover what is legal.
ksec 5y ago
Did we not have a similar discussion with Douglas Crockford's Do No Evil MIT License? The complexity of moral issues is that they are hard to define. And lawyers hated it. So the only way to solve this problem would be to use the Open Source License that please you with its worst possible usage scenario.
fomine3 5y ago
A bit tangent: Fody's license https://github.com/Fody/Fody https://github.com/Fody/Fody

wumpus 5y ago

[Because of the edit above, my comment is no longer relevant.]

bramblerose 5y ago
"BSD" can refer to the BSD license, but I think the poster is referring to the operating system here.
MattGaiser 5y ago
I think that is what he meant. What happens when someone created GPL software and then does what this developer does, which is pressure others not to freely use it?
quanticle 5y ago
The intent behind my comment and the two examples was to explain that there really isn't any nuance or controversy here. Any attempt to inject controversy, by saying that the NixOS packagers have some kind of obligation to the original package author because he asked nicely is inherently against the intent of free software, which is that once I have the program running on my system, it's mine to modify and redistribute as I please. Sure, the package author can "ask nicely" that I don't redistribute, but I believe in the four freedoms of the FSF, and by golly I'm going to exercise them.
- wumpus 5y ago
  It would be nicer if you had marked your edit where you made it; it took me a while to notice the postscript. Also, you could have mentioned that you made an edit in your reply. Thanks. I hope next time turns out better.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- soraminazuki 5y ago
  From the looks of it, the upstream author didn't ask nicely too, honest questions from NixOS maintainers were immediately met with mockery.

m463 5y ago

I remember RMS saying that GPL software allows you to USE the software for any purpose. It just governs how you redistribute it, so you pass on the same freedoms you enjoy to others.

abdullahkhalids 5y ago

Look, human society is complex with millions of moving parts. Every law that has ever been written has winners and losers, because it abstracts away many of the details of human behavior and buckets them into simple categories. But just because a law has been written in a particular way, doesn't mean that we forget the intent behind the law, which probably wasn't to have these winners and losers, but it was the best law we could write. People respond to this conundrum in at least two ways. One way is, let's specify even more complex rules and regulations that takes care of the weird cases. The bad thing about this is that it increase compliance costs for everyone, and it only takes care of some cases and never all of them. The other way is to recognize that it's impossible to write perfect laws, so we should take some liberty in interpreting them on a case-by-case basis. The bad thing about this approach is that there is always uncertainty about how your particular case will be interpreted. Usually, both approaches are taken (legislators write ever more complex laws; judges show compassion or come down hard). And this is the correct way to go about it, because it usually allows for fewer winners and losers. But you are advocating that the second way be never practiced, and I don't think that's a good approach. Law is code. And like any piece of code, always has bugs, that need to worked around in the short term, before they are fixed.

jraph 5y ago
We are not in unhandled situation territory here though. The license explicitly gives rights the author does not want to be used.
Nursie 5y ago
Law is not code, it is little like code, it is interpreted in the light of circumstance and applied inconsistently. It’s very variable and relies on humans, who can show forgiveness and compassion. (Sorry, but of a bugbear with the ‘code is law’ crowd…)
- abdullahkhalids 5y ago
  That's pretty much what I said. Attempting to treat law as a perfect bug-free code is a fool's errand.

soraminazuki 5y ago

I agree. He granted people rights to use and distribute his software. It's unreasonable of him to attack people when people start using it. I'm well aware there are some complications with open source licensing, in which many businesses profit off free labor without giving anything back. However, this isn't what happened here. This is a case of volunteers working to ensure that Home Assistant would work on NixOS. The upstream author came anyway and demanded that NixOS not use his software, refusing reasoned dialogue and instead throwing thinly veiled insults. If many consider this acceptable, then the purpose of open source licensing would become moot. I'm glad this doesn't seem to be the case here.

Proven 5y ago
> I'm well aware there are some complications with open source licensing, in which many businesses profit off free labor without giving anything back. How is that a "complication"? That's exactly how it's supposed to work - it's gratis and you may be able to "profit" (benefit) from using it for free.

II2II 5y ago

If it was a dangerous mode of thinking, then any request of support from the author is also a dangerous mode of thinking. After all, from the MIT license: 'THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED'. The author simply made a request, with the full realization that it was nothing more than a request given the license they had used. They are also far from the only only one to exhibit a similar attitude. I recall GNU being antagonistic about the distribution of Emacs under Windows in the past. Given their association with the GPL, that antagonism can be viewed as more of a statement than a request.

geofft 5y ago
Right - there's two parts of "open source" as the term is commonly used, open source as in the license, and open source as in the community. We look skeptically on companies whose "open source" involvement involves dumping code that works for them and not accepting contributions or responding to questions and not participating in upstream communities. We talk about being a good open source citizen because we have an analogy to the real world, where being a "good citizen" is more than merely following the law. We have opinions about codes of conduct (whether for or against) even though those don't affect the license at all. We talk about an open source sustainability crisis even though all the code that's been released so far isn't danger of disappearing. Maybe we need another term for it, but for now, the term as it is used in practice both refers to the licensing regime and the community and culture around it. The idea that projects have maintainers in the first place and aren't just released anonymously to the commons, and moreover that it's reasonable to contact the maintainer if you have a problem to report or an improvement to suggest, is a significant part of what defines the open source community, even though the term "maintainer" appears in no license (except the LaTeX one, which adds some obligations around non-maintainers marking modified copies which is called out in the DFSG as a compromise not to be encouraged). Frankly, it seems to me that the author in question just wants to stick by the license: they want to release the software and not be contacted about it by people who receive it from redistributors. That seems reasonable to me, in the abstract. The hard part is reconciling that with the norms of the community.
- jltsiren 5y ago

UncleMeat 5y ago

Yes and no. What is legal, what is ethical, and what is socially acceptable are all different things. Licenses only cover what is legal.

ksec 5y ago

Did we not have a similar discussion with Douglas Crockford's Do No Evil MIT License? The complexity of moral issues is that they are hard to define. And lawyers hated it. So the only way to solve this problem would be to use the Open Source License that please you with its worst possible usage scenario.

fomine3 5y ago

A bit tangent: Fody's license https://github.com/Fody/Fody https://github.com/Fody/Fody