4 ms·

Liquibase is also not free software. Most of these non-open-source licenses aren't free software. I'm not aware of any exceptions, but I'd be happy to see some

Liquibase is also not free software. Most of these non-open-source licenses aren't free software. I'm not aware of any exceptions, but I'd be happy to see some examples if there are any. The rest of your comment mainly seems to be a mixed bag of rhetoric. It obscures the reality that Liquibase is, to modify your words, "co-opting the" open source movement to make it "more business friendly."

sarchertech 1y ago
I don’t love their license. But I think that a license that says you aren’t free to redistribute this software or it’s derivatives for a fee (including by letting users use it over a network) if you’re a corporation making over $1 billion a year in revenue is perfectly compatible with the original intent of free software. The freedoms were about freedom for the user not a non user developer.
- ants_everywhere 1y ago
  > Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible—just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding. > Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license.
  - sarchertech 1y ago
    Those comments came later. Also making copies and selling them along with the source code is much different than the SaaS model that RMS didn’t predict.
    - ants_everywhere 1y ago
      If you think that the explicit reminder that free software allows selling is inconsistent with the original definition, then I think the onus is on you to prove that inconsistency. So far I read your comments as giving a sort of argument from silence that commercial transactions weren't explicitly mentioned in the earliest versions together with a gut feeling that your view is the same as theirs. The original 1986 definition, which I see you referring to elsewhere, came from a news letter that's available here: https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt The news letter itself cost $1. And it also includes an order form charging $150 for Emacs ($443.40 in 2025 dollars). The tape and the manual come to $487.74 in 2025 dollars. The issue with SaaS is loss of the freedoms, not that vendors charge money. Free Software was never about forcing organizations to break even or operate at a loss. If you believe that's inherent to the original definition then I think you'd have to present a clearer argument for that position. Free Software Foundation Order Form February 6, 1986 All software and publications are distributed with a permission to copy and redistribute. Quantity Price Item ________ $150 GNU Emacs source code, on a 1600bpi industry standard mag tape in tar format. The tape also contains MIT Scheme (a dialect of Lisp), hack (a rogue-like game) and bison (a compatible replacement for yacc). ________ $15 GNU Emacs manual. This includes a reference card. Thus, a tape and one manual come to $165. ________ $60 Box of six GNU Emacs manuals, shipped book rate. ________ $1 GNU Emacs reference card. Or: ________ $6 One dozen GNU Emacs reference cards. Shipping outside North America is normally by surface mail. For air mail delivery, please add $15 per tape or manual, $1 for an individual reference card, or 50 cents per card in quantity twelve or more. Prices are subject to change without notice. Massachusetts residents please add 5% sales tax to all prices.
      - sarchertech 1y ago
        I’m in no way saying that free software didn’t allow selling. I’m saying that it didn’t forbid licenses that added restrictions on vendors.
        ants_everywhere 1y ago
        Thanks for clarifying. But I think that's the same thing in the context of the FSF's thinking. I believe you are arguing that missing freedom 0 implied a sort of compatibility with the non-commercial restriction (this is the argument from silence I referred to earlier). But from what I see, the incompatibility of non-commercial restrictions is forced by the logic. Freedom 0 was almost surely an attempt to clarify confusions and make explicit an implicit assumption. There are really two issues here: one is what counts as copyleft (i.e. the ideal FSF license) and what counts as compatible with copyleft. The so-called permissive licenses like MIT and BSD are compatible with copyleft licenses in a way that licenses that restrict commercial access aren't. That's because these licenses don't add new restrictions but the non-commercial one does. The abstract idea of copyleft is that it's a chain of rights grants A > B > C > D... where entities on the right have exactly the same rights as the entities on the left. In other words, copyleft preserves downstream freedoms, or ">" is a freedom preserving operator for copyleft software. A permissive licensed piece of software X can be incorporated into copyleft software, say, B because X does not restrict any freedom required to be free software. However once incorporated, the chain becomes absorbed, you can't un-free the free software. So X >' B where >' is a sort of injection operation, but then everything downstream of B uses the ">" operator. X can also spin off proprietary copies of itself. Those are not compatible with free software, but they exist on a different branch of the rights grant tree and so aren't relevant to free software. On the other hand a license with a non-commercial clause includes a restriction already. It's not a hypothetical restriction that someone else can add to a fork (as in permissive licenses). You can't take a license with a non-commercial clause M and map it into free software because, as you granted, free software includes the right to sell and the license doesn't grant the right to remove the non-commercial restriction. If it did grant the right to remove that restriction, then a fork that removed the restriction would possibly be compatible with free software. What your argument amounts to in this framing is that even though A has the right to sell copies of the software, ">" doesn't have to preserve that right. This would require a stronger argument IMO, since (1) the freedom to charge is explicitly mentioned early even if it's not explicitly enumerated as one of the four freedoms yet, and (2) we have no examples where the FSF allows an entity on the left of ">" to terminate rights on the right of ">". That would break ">" as an operator.
- behringer 1y ago
  You are mistaken.
  - sarchertech 1y ago
    I don’t think that I am.
    - rpdillon 1y ago
      The FSF never drew a distinction between users and developers. They considered all users to be developers and all developers to be users.
  - pc86 1y ago
    Might I suggest that if it's so clear cut as your comment suggests, perhaps provide even a single argument to that point? This comment might as well just be "nah."
    - behringer 1y ago
      I don't see why, the original comment also gave no concrete reasoning beyond mere opinion.
      - pc86 1y ago
        Because it devolves into exactly what happened: "You're wrong." "No I'm not." "Yeah you are." "Nuh uh" "Yuh huh"
        pessimizer 1y ago
        When people say something with no reference and no argument, the most they're owed is "no, you're wrong." If you give them anything else, it's a gift.
    - account42 1y ago
      Nah.
- Flimm 1y ago
  If you're talking about free-as-in-freedom software, promoted by Richard Stallman and the FSF, then they have always been clear that Free software must not forbid commercial usage or require payment. Vendors are perfectly free to sell copies of Free software if they wish, but the license cannot forbid making copies and derivatives, even for commercial usage. See: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#selling https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#selling
  - sarchertech 1y ago
    The original use before the 4 freedoms were codified said nothing about the rights of non user vendors.
    - Qwuke 1y ago
      >the rights of non user vendors Because everyone was always a user in the definition of free software! Because it's free as in free speech.. In the first bulletin where the definition was made, Stallman envisioned no restrictions on distribution and a user being a business was entirely unrelated to how compensation were to occur: https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt
      - sarchertech 1y ago
        >Because everyone was always a user In the very early days they were always the same, but differences between use and distribution emerged quickly. For example, there are zero restrictions, duties, or obligations on using the software. But once you distribute changes (or in the AGPL case allow other people to use your changes), duties and obligations attach.
        Qwuke 1y ago
        >In the very early days they were always the same, but differences between use and distribution emerged quickly. I think those concerns existed at the time of the writing of the first bulletin, if you read how they were expecting to be compensated. See the part titled "So, how could programmers make a living?". >For example, there are zero restrictions, duties, or obligations on using the software. But once you distribute changes (or in the AGPL case allow other people to use your changes), duties and obligations attach. Yep, the duty and obligation to redistribute, as mentioned in the bulletin above - but without a single company being the sole arbiter or commercializer of the source, as defined in the Free Software Definition you mention elsewhere. Freely, as in free speech.. A quote from the original bulletin: ``` This means much more than just saving everyone the price of a license. It means that much wasteful duplication of system programming effort will be avoided. This effort can go instead into advancing the state of the art. Complete system sources will be available to everyone. As a result, a user who needs changes in the system will always be free to make them himself, or hire any available programmer or company to make them for him. Users will no longer be at the mercy of one programmer or company which owns the sources and is in sole position to make changes. ``` In the SaaS era, freedom is impinged not because hyperscalers make money off of free software. That was always the intended goal, because it isn't freedom like free beer or simply 'non-commercial uses'. Freedom is impinged because modifications of the software aren't redistributed if distribution is only done over generated artifacts on a network. AGPL is specifically for networked software like this. Unless you're implying that the GNU foundation, Richard Stallman, or the free software movement generally ever viewed even narrowly commercially restrictive licenses as free software. Which you can tell from the source documents and all others in this comment thread, that is obviously not the case.
- piperswe 1y ago
  The developer and the user are one and the same. Freedom for one is freedom for the other. Users should have the freedom to pay someone else to act as developer for them, as well. These tenets are core to Free Software. Without freedom for users _and_ developers, there is no true freedom.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- account42 1y ago
  > perfectly compatible with the original intent of free software The original creators of the free software movement would disagree. You are trying to co-opt the free software movement for your own ideals.
sofixa 1y ago
> Most of these non-open-source licenses aren't free software Free as in beer? They are. BSL and SSPL and FSL and friends are free, with some restrictions which are usually extremely reasonable and boil down to forbidding reselling.
- mcny 1y ago
  In context of GNU and FSF, when we say free software, we always mean free software with the basic freedoms Freedom 0: The freedom to use the program for any purpose. Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbor. Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. If you do price segmentation and prohibit billion (trillion?) dollar companies such as Amazon.com from using it, it is no longer free software
  - citizenkeen 1y ago
    Which freedom does that violate?
    - ahtihn 1y ago
      Freedom 0. Amazon is prohibited from using it for their commercial offering.
  - sarchertech 1y ago
    Based on the current definitions. If we go back in time to the early 80s, there were no rights for non-user vendors being discussed.
  - close04 1y ago
    You omitted an important clarification stated before those freedoms: > The word "free" in our name does not refer to price; it refers to freedom It's free as in libre, not free as in gratis. They don't prohibit the exchange of money.

sarchertech 1y ago

I don’t love their license. But I think that a license that says you aren’t free to redistribute this software or it’s derivatives for a fee (including by letting users use it over a network) if you’re a corporation making over $1 billion a year in revenue is perfectly compatible with the original intent of free software. The freedoms were about freedom for the user not a non user developer.

ants_everywhere 1y ago
> Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible—just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding. > Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license.
- sarchertech 1y ago
  Those comments came later. Also making copies and selling them along with the source code is much different than the SaaS model that RMS didn’t predict.
  - ants_everywhere 1y ago
    If you think that the explicit reminder that free software allows selling is inconsistent with the original definition, then I think the onus is on you to prove that inconsistency. So far I read your comments as giving a sort of argument from silence that commercial transactions weren't explicitly mentioned in the earliest versions together with a gut feeling that your view is the same as theirs. The original 1986 definition, which I see you referring to elsewhere, came from a news letter that's available here: https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt The news letter itself cost $1. And it also includes an order form charging $150 for Emacs ($443.40 in 2025 dollars). The tape and the manual come to $487.74 in 2025 dollars. The issue with SaaS is loss of the freedoms, not that vendors charge money. Free Software was never about forcing organizations to break even or operate at a loss. If you believe that's inherent to the original definition then I think you'd have to present a clearer argument for that position. Free Software Foundation Order Form February 6, 1986 All software and publications are distributed with a permission to copy and redistribute. Quantity Price Item ________ $150 GNU Emacs source code, on a 1600bpi industry standard mag tape in tar format. The tape also contains MIT Scheme (a dialect of Lisp), hack (a rogue-like game) and bison (a compatible replacement for yacc). ________ $15 GNU Emacs manual. This includes a reference card. Thus, a tape and one manual come to $165. ________ $60 Box of six GNU Emacs manuals, shipped book rate. ________ $1 GNU Emacs reference card. Or: ________ $6 One dozen GNU Emacs reference cards. Shipping outside North America is normally by surface mail. For air mail delivery, please add $15 per tape or manual, $1 for an individual reference card, or 50 cents per card in quantity twelve or more. Prices are subject to change without notice. Massachusetts residents please add 5% sales tax to all prices.
    - sarchertech 1y ago
      I’m in no way saying that free software didn’t allow selling. I’m saying that it didn’t forbid licenses that added restrictions on vendors.
      - ants_everywhere 1y ago
        Thanks for clarifying. But I think that's the same thing in the context of the FSF's thinking. I believe you are arguing that missing freedom 0 implied a sort of compatibility with the non-commercial restriction (this is the argument from silence I referred to earlier). But from what I see, the incompatibility of non-commercial restrictions is forced by the logic. Freedom 0 was almost surely an attempt to clarify confusions and make explicit an implicit assumption. There are really two issues here: one is what counts as copyleft (i.e. the ideal FSF license) and what counts as compatible with copyleft. The so-called permissive licenses like MIT and BSD are compatible with copyleft licenses in a way that licenses that restrict commercial access aren't. That's because these licenses don't add new restrictions but the non-commercial one does. The abstract idea of copyleft is that it's a chain of rights grants A > B > C > D... where entities on the right have exactly the same rights as the entities on the left. In other words, copyleft preserves downstream freedoms, or ">" is a freedom preserving operator for copyleft software. A permissive licensed piece of software X can be incorporated into copyleft software, say, B because X does not restrict any freedom required to be free software. However once incorporated, the chain becomes absorbed, you can't un-free the free software. So X >' B where >' is a sort of injection operation, but then everything downstream of B uses the ">" operator. X can also spin off proprietary copies of itself. Those are not compatible with free software, but they exist on a different branch of the rights grant tree and so aren't relevant to free software. On the other hand a license with a non-commercial clause includes a restriction already. It's not a hypothetical restriction that someone else can add to a fork (as in permissive licenses). You can't take a license with a non-commercial clause M and map it into free software because, as you granted, free software includes the right to sell and the license doesn't grant the right to remove the non-commercial restriction. If it did grant the right to remove that restriction, then a fork that removed the restriction would possibly be compatible with free software. What your argument amounts to in this framing is that even though A has the right to sell copies of the software, ">" doesn't have to preserve that right. This would require a stronger argument IMO, since (1) the freedom to charge is explicitly mentioned early even if it's not explicitly enumerated as one of the four freedoms yet, and (2) we have no examples where the FSF allows an entity on the left of ">" to terminate rights on the right of ">". That would break ">" as an operator.
behringer 1y ago
You are mistaken.
- sarchertech 1y ago
  I don’t think that I am.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    The FSF never drew a distinction between users and developers. They considered all users to be developers and all developers to be users.
- pc86 1y ago
  Might I suggest that if it's so clear cut as your comment suggests, perhaps provide even a single argument to that point? This comment might as well just be "nah."
  - behringer 1y ago
    I don't see why, the original comment also gave no concrete reasoning beyond mere opinion.
    - pc86 1y ago
      Because it devolves into exactly what happened: "You're wrong." "No I'm not." "Yeah you are." "Nuh uh" "Yuh huh"
      - pessimizer 1y ago
        When people say something with no reference and no argument, the most they're owed is "no, you're wrong." If you give them anything else, it's a gift.
  - account42 1y ago
    Nah.
Flimm 1y ago
If you're talking about free-as-in-freedom software, promoted by Richard Stallman and the FSF, then they have always been clear that Free software must not forbid commercial usage or require payment. Vendors are perfectly free to sell copies of Free software if they wish, but the license cannot forbid making copies and derivatives, even for commercial usage. See: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#selling https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#selling
- sarchertech 1y ago
  The original use before the 4 freedoms were codified said nothing about the rights of non user vendors.
  - Qwuke 1y ago
    >the rights of non user vendors Because everyone was always a user in the definition of free software! Because it's free as in free speech.. In the first bulletin where the definition was made, Stallman envisioned no restrictions on distribution and a user being a business was entirely unrelated to how compensation were to occur: https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.txt
    - sarchertech 1y ago
      >Because everyone was always a user In the very early days they were always the same, but differences between use and distribution emerged quickly. For example, there are zero restrictions, duties, or obligations on using the software. But once you distribute changes (or in the AGPL case allow other people to use your changes), duties and obligations attach.
      - Qwuke 1y ago
        >In the very early days they were always the same, but differences between use and distribution emerged quickly. I think those concerns existed at the time of the writing of the first bulletin, if you read how they were expecting to be compensated. See the part titled "So, how could programmers make a living?". >For example, there are zero restrictions, duties, or obligations on using the software. But once you distribute changes (or in the AGPL case allow other people to use your changes), duties and obligations attach. Yep, the duty and obligation to redistribute, as mentioned in the bulletin above - but without a single company being the sole arbiter or commercializer of the source, as defined in the Free Software Definition you mention elsewhere. Freely, as in free speech.. A quote from the original bulletin: ``` This means much more than just saving everyone the price of a license. It means that much wasteful duplication of system programming effort will be avoided. This effort can go instead into advancing the state of the art. Complete system sources will be available to everyone. As a result, a user who needs changes in the system will always be free to make them himself, or hire any available programmer or company to make them for him. Users will no longer be at the mercy of one programmer or company which owns the sources and is in sole position to make changes. ``` In the SaaS era, freedom is impinged not because hyperscalers make money off of free software. That was always the intended goal, because it isn't freedom like free beer or simply 'non-commercial uses'. Freedom is impinged because modifications of the software aren't redistributed if distribution is only done over generated artifacts on a network. AGPL is specifically for networked software like this. Unless you're implying that the GNU foundation, Richard Stallman, or the free software movement generally ever viewed even narrowly commercially restrictive licenses as free software. Which you can tell from the source documents and all others in this comment thread, that is obviously not the case.
piperswe 1y ago
The developer and the user are one and the same. Freedom for one is freedom for the other. Users should have the freedom to pay someone else to act as developer for them, as well. These tenets are core to Free Software. Without freedom for users _and_ developers, there is no true freedom.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
account42 1y ago
> perfectly compatible with the original intent of free software The original creators of the free software movement would disagree. You are trying to co-opt the free software movement for your own ideals.

sofixa 1y ago

> Most of these non-open-source licenses aren't free software Free as in beer? They are. BSL and SSPL and FSL and friends are free, with some restrictions which are usually extremely reasonable and boil down to forbidding reselling.

mcny 1y ago
In context of GNU and FSF, when we say free software, we always mean free software with the basic freedoms Freedom 0: The freedom to use the program for any purpose. Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbor. Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. If you do price segmentation and prohibit billion (trillion?) dollar companies such as Amazon.com from using it, it is no longer free software
- citizenkeen 1y ago
  Which freedom does that violate?
  - ahtihn 1y ago
    Freedom 0. Amazon is prohibited from using it for their commercial offering.
- sarchertech 1y ago
  Based on the current definitions. If we go back in time to the early 80s, there were no rights for non-user vendors being discussed.
- close04 1y ago
  You omitted an important clarification stated before those freedoms: > The word "free" in our name does not refer to price; it refers to freedom It's free as in libre, not free as in gratis. They don't prohibit the exchange of money.