Open Source is beginning to lose all of its value as a term...
...as in a river delivering "open source" water.
Let's get back to dealing with "Free Software" and the clear GPL license.
🇳🇱
@Algot How ya figure, open-source seems to be a rather useful and meaningful term.
Personally as an open-source contributor I refuse to contribute to GPL due to its vital nature. As a license it simply doesnt work or play well with others.
Generally MIT like licenses like BSD and Apache are the way to go. They can thankfully play nice with each other, and unlike GPL free means free (As in freedom).
@Algot Not sure of the relevance of that reply.
Generally my stance is one which encourages different "goals". Since MIT/Apache/BSD licenses can be freely used, even inside GPL projects, it ensures that various "goals" can be rectified. The same isnt true of GPL which sadly doesnt cater do differing goals.
I see "open source" as a gift...
...someone writes effective, useful code and puts it out for anyone...any person...any corporation...to use it and to appropriate it and to add to it and to keep it for themselves and ...
...our opinions will probably continue to diverge from there.
In the case of software, for example, someone writes code, then a company takes it, and deprecates the original (by scale of effort such as marketing, etc). It maybe is too stringent, if the code is something like a library meant to be used by applications.
But conceptually, for example, an author writes a book and distributes under CC-BY. It'd be unfair for the author if Hollywood later uses it to make a blockbuster movie with no type of obligation to compensate said author.
Additionally, if someone does not want to use GPL to infect the codebase AFAIK, there can still be negotiations under acceptable terms e.g the many proprietary video games made under GPL game engines. (Call of Duty games, and Quake engine)
@licho
GPL usually cant be negotiated due to the viral nature. You'fd have to get permission from every author, every gpl libraries author, etc. Usually not possible.
If I wrote a book and released it to be open-source I would be happy if someone made a movie out of it. I had no intentions of making money off of it in the first place, so why would I find it unfair?
The other part your forgetting is the act of it being open-source is already reducing how much they can make off of it such that they are essentially making money off their additions.
Consider the book example. If someone takes the book, adds a single line of text, and then sells it. Well under a permissive license they must still indicate it comes from open-source. So anyone looking at the book on a shelf will quickly see that a free and open version (sans the one line) is availible for free. So if someone wants to purchase the new one they arent buying the full book, they are only considering the value of the one additional line and if that is worth buying the book.
In short they arent making money off your open-sourced book, they are only making money off of their ADDITIONS to that book. Which I dont see as even remotely unfair.
@licho Odd, but sure
Between the choice of "all rights reserved", and "public domain" people who work on something will obviously prefer the former as they benefit personally the most from it. The cost of time and effort that goes into ideation and creation is not the same as distribution. The same goes for the work of programmers (though many will offer their work for free), and etc.
So, the book and Hollywood example, the value of the author's idea is not rewarded as well if derivatives and adaptations can be made with no compensation.
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Your example with a book is flawed however, because people who had no previous exposure to an "open source" book, are not necessarily aware of the difference between it and a original. There is no real life 'diff' and hyperlinks.
It is also precisely the type of case that U.S Law aims to prevent in terms of derivative work.
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@freemo
Goals differ among friends.