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Comment by sarchertech | Hacker News Reader

My entire point is that “Source available” is a term frequently used in a derogatory way to make software that doesn’t follow the principles and hey espouse sound dirty.

My entire point is how big tech has captured the zeitgeist, so the common use of that term is irrelevant.

>No court in any legal system would throw away a license based on giving "too much control".

You are 100% incorrect. Contracts are frequently found unenforceable for this exact reason.

>So it does not meet the original free software's required freedoms, and is therefore not free software?

The original definition says nothing about a fee or what restrictions may be in place.

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>My entire point is that “Source available” is a term frequently used in a derogatory way to make software that doesn’t follow the principles and hey espouse sound dirty.

It's not dirty, it just doesn't follow the principles the rest of us espouse. We're interested in software that follows these principles via a license like this.

That you're ascribing malice to the entire FOSS community seems a bit strange, when they're the ones who created the free software definition in the first place. The source is available but is not free software even in the original definition.

>Contracts are frequently found unenforceable for this exact reason.

So, personal theory, wrt AGPL. Given you've recently been made aware of the stack of case law for AGPL and that it is largely _just_ GPLv3, I wonder why you think this is a possibility given it is your uninformed non-expert opinion.

>The original definition says nothing about a fee or what restrictions may be in place.

Completely out of context, because even the original definition defines it as "free speech" as in that there are no restrictions on the ways you can freely using it anyway you want, including distributing it.

You're right that a business might offer a fee for free software under this definition, but that's unrelated to it being free to distribute under any clauses.

Given that Stallman is alive and we don't have to do dubious Stallman legal textualism to justify source available licenses, when even source available license writers and users are fine with that distinction, seems a bit strange.

>It's not dirty, it just doesn't follow the principles the rest of us espouse. We're interested in software that follows these principles via a license like this.

I've been involved in this for decades at this point. Free Software and Open Source folks generally "source available" as a pejorative.

By using a term that implies the lowest level of freedoms possible for software that doesn't restrict access to the source code, you are implying that no freedoms exist beyond reading the source.

>Given you've recently been made aware of the stack of case law for AGPL and that it is largely _just_ GPLv3, I wonder why you think this is a possibility given it is your uninformed non-expert opinion.

AGPL significantly changes GPLv3. If you want to understand how that could cause it to be unenforceable read up on severability and its limitations in various jurisdictions. Courts have wide latitude in most jurisdictions to decide how much of a contract or license (in civil law jurisdictions they are always the same thing) to uphold if certain parts are invalidated.

>Completely out of context, because even the original definition defines it as "free speech" as in that there are no restrictions on the ways you can freely using it anyway you want, including distributing it.

Free speech has restrictions in every jurisdiction in the world. Saying in something is "free as in free speech" has no implication that it is absolutely free from all duties, obligations , or restrictions.

If that is a requirement for free software, the GPL isn't a free software license because it does place obligations on distribution.

>Given that Stallman is alive and we don't have to do dubious Stallman legal textualism to justify source available licenses, when even source available license writers and users are fine with that distinction, seems a bit strange.

I don't care what a single individual says about what he believes now. I'm more interested in what he said in 1985 and what the people who made up the community believed.

Mostly though I only care about any of the past cruft because Open Source and to a lesser extent Free Software has takes the air out of the room in any discussion about software freedoms.

I'm interested in realistic compromises to make more free software more viable in a world where Amazon, Google, and Facebook exist. I'm not interested in ideals about a very specific meaning of absolutely free software.

>I'm interested in realistic compromises to make more free software more viable in a world where Amazon, Google, and Facebook exist. I'm not interested in ideals about a very specific meaning of absolutely free software.

Okay, I'm confused why you bring free software or the free software definition into this at all then if you're just picking and choosing what parts of the original statement/bulletin you care about and what parts you choose to disregard, on top of disregarding the original movement and organization founded at its inception.

If you're hoping to rebrand source available software, why not call it something other than _free software_ if you want to do a rebranding? You could propose similarly internally consistent principles and attempt to cultivate a community. Call it 'fair source' or 'managed availability' or something. Refer to the 'freedoms' as rights, instead. You'd convince a much larger group and wouldn't have to pretend that principles for commercialization wasn't considered in 1985.

Since, again, from the start there the goal of free software was that no single company was supposed to be the single commercializer of a piece of software. That principles carries to the GPL.

If you're hoping to convince us that source available software is actually free software, you're giving me a great platform to talk to others about the history of actually free software and making yourself appear wrongheaded as if you didn't read the original bulletin or understand the larger software development community, or worse that you're attempting to co-opt our very specific yet widely accepted professional definition of free software.

>Okay, I'm confused why you bring free software or the free software definition into this at all then if you're just picking and choosing what parts of the original statement/bulletin you care about and what parts you choose to disregard, on top of disregarding the original movement and organization founded at its inception.

1. It's important for people to understand how OSI co-opted the goodwill and some of the ideas from the Free Software movement.

2. I think they have some good ideas even if I don't agree with all of them.

>If you're hoping to rebrand source available software, why not call it something other than _free software_ if you want to do a rebranding? You could propose similarly internally consistent principles and attempt to cultivate a community. Call it 'fair source' or 'managed availability' or something. Refer to the 'freedoms' as rights, instead. You'd convince a much larger group and wouldn't have to pretend that principles for commercialization wasn't considered in 1985.

I'm just a guy with 3 kids under 5 and not enough time to run any kind of rebranding project. I'm just angry that whenever someone launches a project that is more free than proprietary software but that isn't OSI approved, 90% of the comments are about why it isn't free or isn't open source.

I could publish a new project on hacker news and call it "fair source" and then explain how fair source isn't free software, but it's like free software with an extra restriction.

The 5 freedoms:

-1: You can't distribute this software if your name ends in "ezos".

0-4 same as the rest.

I guarantee you 90% of the comments would be attacks on the license (even if -1 was something reasonable). And it would start off with negative goodwill. Most people haven't actually read the 4 freedoms or the OSD, most people just follow the zeitgeist and it says Open Source == good, everything else == bad.

I do not think that a group financed primarily by big tech should have this kind control on the goodwill doled out by the community. But they do. I think that the more people that understand that the better.

>1. It's important for people to understand how OSI co-opted the goodwill and some of the ideas from the Free Software movement.

Okay I don't understand why this is happening in the same breath you're suggesting that OSI is responsible for making everyone in the free software movement believe freedom of use (even in commercial cases) is required otherwise things are source available. GNU foundation, OSI, and even source available license writers basically agree on this part. Can you be specific here?

Because otherwise you're just reinforcing the perception I explained above, since largely the disagreement between OSI and the original free software people is that OSI supports too _permissive_ and too many non-copyleft licenses, not that the permissive or copyleft licenses need to enshrine certain license holders or disenfranchise others, or block commercialization or competitors. That's deeply antithetical to the idea of free or open software, regardless of the camp.

>2. I think they have some good ideas even if I don't agree with all of them.

AGPL, despite achieving all of your goals to prevent hyperscalers from free riding, is not one of them?

>I'm just a guy with 3 kids under 5 and not enough time to run any kind of rebranding project. I'm just angry that whenever someone launches a project that is more free than proprietary software but that isn't OSI approved, 90% of the comments are about why it isn't free or isn't open source.

Because the community has largely agreed on the principles codified by OSI. The principles you propose seem to betray the larger movement's intentions significantly, which is much bigger in scope than OSI.

>-1: You can't distribute this software if your name ends in "ezos".

>0-4 same as the rest.

That's a lot different than source available licenses actually, which usually declares enshrines the original license holder, even though it's not technically free under the other principles. I think if you thought up of a new consistent principle that didn't enshrine a single distributor or disenfranchise entire classes of other distributors, people would be open to the idea of a variant of free software.

But I think the bigger issue is that you think AGPL is failing somehow in not being restrictive enough compared to source available licenses. Maybe you could articulate that more clearly, and _that_ would gather more mind share. Merely stating that OSI is bad doesn't really change people's opinion of source available. Mostly reinforcing free software/copyleft maxi's ideas and insinuating GPL needs to be more common.

> My entire point is that “Source available” is a term frequently used in a derogatory way to make software that doesn’t follow the principles

I agree it doesn't need to be called "source available"; it's just proprietary software.

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