4 ms·

Important to note that community involvement is not core to FOSS. Many FOSS projects do not accept outside contributions.

• prepend 3y ago
  Good point, but it’s common. And it’s possible. And the community has the freedom to fork, even if they don’t. And pretty much every successful FOSS project accepts bug reports from users. So that’s still a contribution even though it’s not source code.
  • gavinhoward 3y ago
    > And the community has the freedom to fork, even if they don’t. So does a SAMS community. They just can't turn it commercial (for a noncommercial license), or they have to wait for full FOSS (for a delayed FOSS license), etc. > And pretty much every successful FOSS project accepts bug reports from users. So that’s still a contribution even though it’s not source code. That is still possible with SAMS.
    • prepend 3y ago
      It’s not the possibility that’s important, it’s the practicality. I can “fork” windows. I just can’t do anything with it without paying Microsoft. And I can also spend effort to write up a detailed report to Microsoft or to a SAMS project. But I won’t, because I don’t like doing free labor for corporations.
      • gavinhoward 3y ago
        But you can fork SAMS and do something wuth it without paying the authors. You just have to keep the fork free of money. The only way you would care about that is because you do want money in the fork. Then you become a dealer. As an end user? No difference.