this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
136 points (99.3% liked)
Free and Open Source Software
20143 readers
8 users here now
If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Uhhhh what? That's not how any of that works.
"No discrimination against persons or groups" is about protected classes.
Interpreting it to mean "anyone for any reason" would mean that open source allows people to simply assert sole ownership of it, because to not allow them to is to discriminate against people who want to assert sole ownership. That's an ad absurdum broadening of the OSI ethos.
Edit: a helpful commenter has found where on OSI's website it does prohibit non-commercial-use clauses...
...and the blog author was in fact incorrect in their assertion that it violates the personal discrimination clause (clause 5). It is a violation of Clause 6, “No Discrimination Against Field of Endeavor.” Also, the section specifically talks about prohibiting its use by a business, which is not the same as its sale by a business.
Oh no. This person literally IS trying to just be able to start charging money for someone else's code.
That happens all the time, never has been a problem, and it should not ever be.
"People steal the profits from others' labor all the time, that's normal and good." - You
I suggest you learn how free software actually works unless you want to look like an idiot.
It's not an open-shut answer. Ubuntu is Open Source, but they also have clauses requiring certain changes you must make to remove trademarked branding before you can distribute or sell it commercially, much like the clauses the author is talking about. There are tons of discussions about the specifics of what qualifies as FOSS.
That'd be covered by #4:
Exactly and the model of make changes and remove trademark has worked very well for them. Why not introduce arbitrary other limitations when they are clearly not neccessary?
I am not the CEO of Grayjay, so I can't speak to their reasons, but Canonical is a massive organization with a dedicated legal team (which anyone who wishes to OEM Ubuntu has to negotiate with directly, per the license - you can't just remove branding yourself and go) who know the ins-and-outs of trademark law, and knows what they can and can't do without accidentally giving up their Trademark claim. I know I sure wouldn't feel comfortable navigating that.
Your point is that copyright law is easier to enforce than trademark law? I doubt it. I personally don't care that the lawyers you will definitely need for this and for long do exactly.