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What are you talking about? You can restrict your software from being used for anything at all. iTunes is famously prohibited from being in the making of nucle
by Plasmoid 3y ago
What are you talking about? You can restrict your software from being used for anything at all.
iTunes is famously prohibited from being in the making of nuclear weapons.
- Pannoniae 3y agoSorry, I was a bit unclear. I was talking about the fact that if you release your code as open source but want to restrict how it is used, people will brigade you and flame you for not providing the users all the OSI freedoms. OSI doesn't have a trademark on the expression "open source"....
- yawaramin 3y agoSo what? There's no trademark on 'email' either. Does that mean anyone can redefine it to whatever they want?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Plasmoid 3y agoWords mean things. If you say open source, people are going to expect that your license is going to follow the existing expectations set by OSI. Think about this as setting expectations. You can avoid all the controversy by saying that your software has a generous 'source-available' license. People will know they don't get all the freedoms, and that might be ok, but people won't get upset that you misled them.
- Pannoniae 3y agoFair enough, you are entirely right. But wouldn't that draw a different complaint about "why isn't this open source then if you published the code anyway"? I don't have an example right now but I've seen several projects where it's been a huge source of controversy that they've made it source-available but didn't use any FOSS licence for it.