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What are your thoughts on Stallman explicitly saying that selling exceptions is fine [1]? [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html https://ww

What are your thoughts on Stallman explicitly saying that selling exceptions is fine [1]? [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html

benatkin 3y ago
> I wouldn’t consider any of this open source any more. Stallman's term is "free software", this said "open source". I use OSD to define it, so I consider it technically open source, but to me it's open source that isn't under an acceptable license.
- ralmidani 3y ago
  Free Software and Open Source are essentially the same thing, just looked at from different angles. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... “In practice, open source stands for criteria a little looser than those of free software. As far as we know, all existing released free software source code would qualify as open source. Nearly all open source software is free software, but there are exceptions.”
  - benatkin 3y ago
    Not to me it doesn't. When the thing is a movement in the software community, the perspective changes the essence of the thing.
    - ralmidani 3y ago
      You’re free to adopt whichever perspective you prefer. But Free Software is always Open Source. That’s an objective fact.
      - tcfhgj 3y ago
        The way around isn't true though, which you claimed when you wrote is essentially the same
  - fsflover 3y ago
    The difference is that open-source forces you to think about code, whereas free software about your freedom.
- phoe-krk 3y ago
  The term you're looking for is "permissive". It is open source, but it is no longer as permissive as it was.
  - benatkin 3y ago
    I know that term, but I don't think it's that much more clear. When someone forks the code and makes changes but doesn't contribute it back to the community, them having been allowed to do that is more permissive. However, what outsiders can do with their changes is less permissive. There's no shortcuts to making a nuanced topic much more clear. However, it is a frequently used term, so it's useful for quickly referring to these licenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_software_license https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_software_license I also didn't say that this type of license is the only kind that is acceptable to me. I like copyleft, including AGPL, and for me it depends on the context. In this situation, I want a vendor neutral federated chat tool. There already is one, XMPP, and Matrix has long been putting itself forth as the successor. However, they just made the reference implementation non vendor-neutral.
saagarjha 3y ago
Stallman’s point (which I largely think is a cop out, fwiw) is that the goal should be that the software remains free, and that making small compromises to further that goal is ok. Repositioning your software to be nominally free but actually picking a license that maximizes the chance that people pay you for a proprietary version goes against this spirit, because it’s clear that you don’t actually have software freedom as your priority.
- kiba 3y ago
  If the proprietary version is what they prefer over free and open source software, and which they are not allowed to distribute and modify, and which are otherwise completely identical, it's no skin off my back. If they don't want freedom for themselves, that's on them.
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    The whole point of copyleft is that the proprietary version is going to have changes in it that are not free, which are not contributed back. If they want to go "oh we can sell you an alternative license but you're not actually allowed to change any of the code, so it's just strictly worse than AGPL" only the stupidest of legal departments are going to go for that.
- cxr 3y ago
  > Stallman’s point (which I largely think is a cop out, fwiw) is that the goal should be that the software remains free, and that making small compromises to further that goal is ok. Mm, that doesn't really summarize (or engage with) Stallman's thinking on the matter. Stallman's position is that if it is perfectly ethical for someone to license their research under e.g. BSD, MIT/X11, or a license that is similarly permissive, and it is (of course) ethical to license it under GPL, then it is not more unethical to go with something which sits in between the two (copyleft for some, permissive for others). To put it another way: if Alice picks a GPL-compatible, free software license like Apache 2.0, and then Goog makes something proprietary out of it, then Goog is being unethical, not Alice. If Goog does the same thing and gives Alice money, then nothing changes except the bad actor has less money and the good actor who created the software and made it libre has more money.
gkbrk 3y ago
Here's the opening paragraph from your link. > Selling exceptions means that the copyright holder of the code releases it to the general public under a valid free software license, then separately offers users the option of paying for permission to use the same code under different terms, for instance terms allowing its inclusion in proprietary applications. Crucially, Element is not trying to sell an exception as the copyright holder. They want you to sign a CLA, because they want to sell AGPL exceptions code you wrote, and they are not a copyright holder of your code.

benatkin 3y ago

> I wouldn’t consider any of this open source any more. Stallman's term is "free software", this said "open source". I use OSD to define it, so I consider it technically open source, but to me it's open source that isn't under an acceptable license.

ralmidani 3y ago
Free Software and Open Source are essentially the same thing, just looked at from different angles. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... “In practice, open source stands for criteria a little looser than those of free software. As far as we know, all existing released free software source code would qualify as open source. Nearly all open source software is free software, but there are exceptions.”
- benatkin 3y ago
  Not to me it doesn't. When the thing is a movement in the software community, the perspective changes the essence of the thing.
  - ralmidani 3y ago
    You’re free to adopt whichever perspective you prefer. But Free Software is always Open Source. That’s an objective fact.
    - tcfhgj 3y ago
      The way around isn't true though, which you claimed when you wrote is essentially the same
- fsflover 3y ago
  The difference is that open-source forces you to think about code, whereas free software about your freedom.
phoe-krk 3y ago
The term you're looking for is "permissive". It is open source, but it is no longer as permissive as it was.
- benatkin 3y ago
  I know that term, but I don't think it's that much more clear. When someone forks the code and makes changes but doesn't contribute it back to the community, them having been allowed to do that is more permissive. However, what outsiders can do with their changes is less permissive. There's no shortcuts to making a nuanced topic much more clear. However, it is a frequently used term, so it's useful for quickly referring to these licenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_software_license https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_software_license I also didn't say that this type of license is the only kind that is acceptable to me. I like copyleft, including AGPL, and for me it depends on the context. In this situation, I want a vendor neutral federated chat tool. There already is one, XMPP, and Matrix has long been putting itself forth as the successor. However, they just made the reference implementation non vendor-neutral.

saagarjha 3y ago

Stallman’s point (which I largely think is a cop out, fwiw) is that the goal should be that the software remains free, and that making small compromises to further that goal is ok. Repositioning your software to be nominally free but actually picking a license that maximizes the chance that people pay you for a proprietary version goes against this spirit, because it’s clear that you don’t actually have software freedom as your priority.

kiba 3y ago
If the proprietary version is what they prefer over free and open source software, and which they are not allowed to distribute and modify, and which are otherwise completely identical, it's no skin off my back. If they don't want freedom for themselves, that's on them.
- saagarjha 3y ago
  The whole point of copyleft is that the proprietary version is going to have changes in it that are not free, which are not contributed back. If they want to go "oh we can sell you an alternative license but you're not actually allowed to change any of the code, so it's just strictly worse than AGPL" only the stupidest of legal departments are going to go for that.
cxr 3y ago
> Stallman’s point (which I largely think is a cop out, fwiw) is that the goal should be that the software remains free, and that making small compromises to further that goal is ok. Mm, that doesn't really summarize (or engage with) Stallman's thinking on the matter. Stallman's position is that if it is perfectly ethical for someone to license their research under e.g. BSD, MIT/X11, or a license that is similarly permissive, and it is (of course) ethical to license it under GPL, then it is not more unethical to go with something which sits in between the two (copyleft for some, permissive for others). To put it another way: if Alice picks a GPL-compatible, free software license like Apache 2.0, and then Goog makes something proprietary out of it, then Goog is being unethical, not Alice. If Goog does the same thing and gives Alice money, then nothing changes except the bad actor has less money and the good actor who created the software and made it libre has more money.

gkbrk 3y ago

Here's the opening paragraph from your link. > Selling exceptions means that the copyright holder of the code releases it to the general public under a valid free software license, then separately offers users the option of paying for permission to use the same code under different terms, for instance terms allowing its inclusion in proprietary applications. Crucially, Element is not trying to sell an exception as the copyright holder. They want you to sign a CLA, because they want to sell AGPL exceptions code you wrote, and they are not a copyright holder of your code.