Hacker News Reader

Comment by satvikpendem | Hacker News Reader

What is an example of open source software that is not libre?

Like the other commenter said, the F in F(L)OSS does mean free as in speech, not necessarily free as in beer.

> What is an example of open source software that is not libre?

One example I am familiar with is an (old) project called LinuxSampler. It was (probably incorrectly) licensed GPL+modification clause that prevented its use in any commercial hardware project.

There have been some other projects that are released under what might be termed "GPL-but-no-military-use".

Then they're not really open source then? Incorrectly licensing them doesn't actually mean they're open source.

Unless you insist that open source means "there can be absolutely no limits whatsoever on the use of the source code" (which is not an unreasonable position), then they still fit into many people's sense of open source - they can do anything they would want to do with it.

The people I know who have added clauses like this do not believe they are breaking the spirit of open source; I'm not here to insist that they are right or wrong.

I'm here to insist they are wrong, because people's notion of a term is not actually what that term might mean. Call me an etymological prescriptivist but OSS has a defined meaning that no amount of vibes-based hand wringing will change, it pertains to the OSI definition in my view.

And let's not forget, licenses are legal contracts, so it behooves people even more to get them correct lest they be sued.

The terms "OSS" and "open source" do not appear in the licenses associated with them.

Why would they be, literally? That doesn't mean anything about whether they are in the category of open source or not.

People disagree about this. If F is for free as in speech, what is the L for?

I've been in the GNU/libre/open source world since 1986. My experience is that the L (for libre) was added specifically because the english "Free" is ambiguous and too often interpreted as without-cost/free-as-in-beer/gratis.

Libre more specifically means the GNU licenses, as GNU didn't like that licenses like MIT were being called FOSS, as they don't preserve user freedoms like (A|L)GPL do.

This is absolutely not the history I have lived through.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html

Stallman wants people to say FLOSS to denote free software versus open source software, and my interpretation of this article is that he only deems the GNU licenses to be truly free (libre) software.

Stallman acknowledges the he did not invent the term, and describes how the "L" was added to connote freedom in the free-as-in-speech sense, rather than type of freedom the "F" was typically associated with.

FOSS was already a term to denote the other types of open source license like MIT, that is why FLOSS was specifically coined, to not only say that there is a difference in the word free, but also to differentiate GNU OSS license from the others.

> [..] only deems the GNU licenses to be truly free (libre) software.

Simply has never been the case.

The “NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3” is an Open Source license that is not a Free Software license (hence not Libre).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com