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Use without compensation is what an author intentionally signed up for by choosing the MIT license or other FOSS licenses. The marketers are trying to sell thi
by ThrowawayR2 2y ago
Use without compensation is what an author intentionally signed up for by choosing the MIT license or other FOSS licenses. The marketers are trying to sell this as "unfair", "predatory", etc., as if the authors were too ignorant to understand the implications of their own license choice.
It is perfectly fine to choose Fair Source as a license; that's the prerogative of whoever is writing the code. But don't let these people marketing Fair Source circulate the idea that FOSS licensing is "unfair". It's just another sleazy tactic they're trying after their attempt to redefine open source to include their proprietary Fair Source licensing got rebuffed by the community.
- LoganDark 2y agoOkay, fine, open source licenses aren't unfair on their own, but making your project open-source can put you in unfair situations. That better? Now look, I can understand the argument that one should have known what they were signing up for, but so many people just do not consider what they are signing up for, or even do but think that the worst case situation is unlikely, but later find it happening and that they don't actually entirely not care.
- ThrowawayR2 2y agoI'm sorry but I don't buy that. The arguments between Free Software licenses, open source licenses, proprietary licenses in in all their myriad flavors have been raging in hacker and startup circles for literally decades now. GPL 2 is 33 years old(!). A developer would have to have been living under a rock to be unaware that their license choice directly impacts their ability to monetize their code and, even if they were that negligent, whoever was funding their startup would have warned them.
- LoganDark 2y ago> A developer would have to have been living under a rock to be unaware that their license choice directly impacts their ability to monetize their code That's basically exactly what I'm trying to point out though. Many developers make the determination that they don't want or need to monetize their code. Then someone else does it and then they feel it is unfair. I consider this a perfectly valid way to feel and I don't really consider it a skill issue at the time of choosing the license.