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Could somebody who maintains a particularly important open source software change the license to say basically “you must release your source code to anyone who

by xt00 3y ago

Could somebody who maintains a particularly important open source software change the license to say basically “you must release your source code to anyone who requests it free of charge whether they are a customer or not”? Yes Redhat is a for profit company, but them deciding to make a business off of software that has licenses that might change to their detriment is their problem. Oh wait is that what they are doing to others now too? Well I guess that’s what happens..

eastbound 3y ago
Free has never meant monetarily free. Open-source means you can recompile, and thus maintain after the EOL of the provider, and code secrets aren’t secret. This is already a step above proprietary software. For example: Wordpress themes are OSS. You must pay the gatekeeper, but you can inspect the code. But free lunch is something else. Which OSS developers can also require, I’m not discussing that.
- f33d5173 3y ago
  Open source means you can redistribute the code having received it. If you aren't allowed to do so, the program is 'source-available', not open source.
  - neverartful 3y ago
    This is very enlightening! Thanks for sharing it. Ok, I can now see how RH might have backed themselves into a corner with the license.
- xt00 3y ago
  Yea selling an entire OS that consists of a ton of other peoples open source projects—often paid for by other companies to have somebody work on a thing — then when people say “hey we should get a copy of the small tweaks you did to all of those bits” and they say no, seems like a situation where changing the license on enough critical parts force the OS maker to not withhold the software. What would stop Redhat from saying “we’ve decided the only customers we care about will pay us 50k to be a customer, therefore anybody who doesn’t pay 50k cannot get source from us.. and anybody distributing the source code owes us 50k..”
  - ahtihn 3y ago
    > What would stop Redhat from saying "[...] and anybody distributing the source code owes us 50k..” The GPL doesn't allow this.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    When people buy RHEL what are they buying? I always thought that when buying RHEL you are buying their support, build infra, signatures, testing, etc. You're essentially buying the boring stuff- NOT the actual open source code which is available freely to anyone.
zamadatix 3y ago
You can just as easily change your license to one which does not allow corporate use. This has the same result, the last previously licensed version of your project is forked by corporations. I.e. if your goal is to stop providing free use of your future work you're always welcome to it, but don't hold your breath that these companies will suddenly clamor back as a result.
- Double_a_92 3y ago
  It won't be exactly the same result. If the license is just not compatible with commercial use, the software just won't be used ever. But yeah that clause would make it the same, because it's insane to demand that a company has to release all its source code just to use some open source library.

by xt00 3y ago

eastbound 3y ago

Free has never meant monetarily free. Open-source means you can recompile, and thus maintain after the EOL of the provider, and code secrets aren’t secret. This is already a step above proprietary software. For example: Wordpress themes are OSS. You must pay the gatekeeper, but you can inspect the code. But free lunch is something else. Which OSS developers can also require, I’m not discussing that.

f33d5173 3y ago
Open source means you can redistribute the code having received it. If you aren't allowed to do so, the program is 'source-available', not open source.
- neverartful 3y ago
  This is very enlightening! Thanks for sharing it. Ok, I can now see how RH might have backed themselves into a corner with the license.
xt00 3y ago
Yea selling an entire OS that consists of a ton of other peoples open source projects—often paid for by other companies to have somebody work on a thing — then when people say “hey we should get a copy of the small tweaks you did to all of those bits” and they say no, seems like a situation where changing the license on enough critical parts force the OS maker to not withhold the software. What would stop Redhat from saying “we’ve decided the only customers we care about will pay us 50k to be a customer, therefore anybody who doesn’t pay 50k cannot get source from us.. and anybody distributing the source code owes us 50k..”
- ahtihn 3y ago
  > What would stop Redhat from saying "[...] and anybody distributing the source code owes us 50k..” The GPL doesn't allow this.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  When people buy RHEL what are they buying? I always thought that when buying RHEL you are buying their support, build infra, signatures, testing, etc. You're essentially buying the boring stuff- NOT the actual open source code which is available freely to anyone.

zamadatix 3y ago

You can just as easily change your license to one which does not allow corporate use. This has the same result, the last previously licensed version of your project is forked by corporations. I.e. if your goal is to stop providing free use of your future work you're always welcome to it, but don't hold your breath that these companies will suddenly clamor back as a result.

Double_a_92 3y ago
It won't be exactly the same result. If the license is just not compatible with commercial use, the software just won't be used ever. But yeah that clause would make it the same, because it's insane to demand that a company has to release all its source code just to use some open source library.