3 ms·

Code existed before FOSS. Code that people collaborated on existed before FOSS. Code given away for free existed before FOSS. FOSS code, by itself, is not anyth

by crashabr 11mo ago

Code existed before FOSS. Code that people collaborated on existed before FOSS. Code given away for free existed before FOSS. FOSS code, by itself, is not anything special. Licences also existed before FOSS, but open sources licences enabling the kind of freedoms that they allow did not exist. And as it happens, a license is not a technical artefact but a social contract. Stallman is activist, not simply a neutral combination of a technician and a lawyer. The social contract and political vision are consequently not ancillary, but core to FOSS. Code is the medium, but the license is the innovation. Without that social contract, 'open' code is just abandonware. The community doesn't need to be a 'house party,' but the license guarantees the right for a community to form when the original author walks away.

nickelpro 11mo ago
> The community doesn't need to be a 'house party,' but the license guarantees the right for a community to form when the original author walks away. Which is why the license is the only thing that matters. Without the license you don't have the community. It will happen with some code, it won't happen to other code. Without the license, or without the code, it never happens. The only thing you need to do as an open source software developer is release your code under an open source license. You don't need to respond to or even maintain an issue tracker, you don't need to accept MRs into your upstream, you don't need to care about anyone else using your code. Open source places no other obligations on a developer other than the license. To say otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand what open source is.