2 ms·

Is it really open and free if NPM can make editorial decisions that trump the repo owner, whenever they want? I think the implication of this is software packag

• Macha 5y ago
  Freedom 3 of the Free Software Definition: > The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. One of the tests for the Debian Free Software Guidelines: > "The Tentacles of Evil test". Imagine that the author is hired by a large evil corporation and, now in their thrall, attempts to do the worst to the users of the program: to make their lives miserable, to make them stop using the program, to expose them to legal liability, to make the program non-free, to discover their secrets, etc. The same can happen to a corporation bought out by a larger corporation bent on destroying free software in order to maintain its monopoly and extend its evil empire. To be free, the license cannot allow even the author to take away the required freedoms. By these standards, if NPM could not do this (or could only do this by virtue of their TOS), then faker.js and colors.js would not qualify as free software. Most free software definitions are focused on preserving the freedoms of the user first, other wishes of the author like "being paid" or "printing ascii American flags" are secondary