orangeshark

Joined 11 years ago

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Comment · 3 years ago

Didn't have much of an issue when I installed Ubuntu on my dad's laptop with his limited computer experiences, didn't have many issues. Have you never encountered issues with Windows or MacOS? My experiences with Windows had many very frustrating experiences where I am sure won't be good either for common people.

Comment · 4 years ago

You usually require them to assign copyright back to you so you can still use it in your proprietary version.

Comment · 5 years ago

I don't think there should be much of a surprise, Fedora project is part of Red Hat which is now owned by IBM. Now would they fight to open it back up?

Comment · 5 years ago

I would agree the big difference is culturally, but I don't think it is really just the licenses that they choose. Free Software people value user freedoms, any license that allows that is good for them. There is no difference when a user uses a copyleft or more permissively licensed software because they have those same freedoms. Now when the code is a library, that is definitely a concern for the Free Software person because a permissive license can allow that code to be included in software that removes those freedoms from the user. So they might prefer a copyleft license like the GPL or a slightly more permissive license like the LGPL.

Open Source might be a bit more complicated to explain because there actually seems to be multiple groups under it. A big part of it is more about a development method where you develop the software out in the open, allowing anyone to contribute. This was made popular by Linux and is now pretty much used by all Free and Open Source Software projects. People in this community will often say this is a superior way to develop software over other methods and allow you to create better quality and more reliable software. Then there is the group that prefers permissive licenses because it is more business friendly as described by this post. Then more recently is this new group that wants to restrict a bit on the usage of their software with licenses like the Commons Clause and the Server Side Public License. I know many don't consider these open source, but it is a valid concern for these type of projects and they are originally open source projects trying to figure out a solution.

Comment · 5 years ago

It is both. Here[0] is GNU comparing them. The Open Source Initiative also has their definition[1] of Open Source.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html

[1] https://opensource.org/osd

Comment · 5 years ago

> Even though OSI clearly defines what "open source" means, it is sometimes (often even?) used as a synonym for "source available"

Where do they define this? In the OSI definition it doesn't mention having the source available for everyone, only that whoever has the program should be able to get the source[0]. I do believe it doesn't follow "open source" the development model where development is in the open and anyone can contribute.

[0] https://opensource.org/osd

Comment · 5 years ago

It is a general term for the process of breaking a string into "tokens" which have a sort of meaning. Definitely a common task in compilers, but not limited to it.

Comment · 5 years ago

See red light cameras. You recieve a ticket through the mail and you get pictures and a video of the violation. There is a lot of people against it and some governments have legistation against the use of it.

Comment · 6 years ago

the freedom part is not for the software developer, it is for the end user running the software.

Comment · 6 years ago

Free Software doesn't have to be free to use either (free as in free beer).

Comment · 6 years ago

last one is sort of basically what GPLv3 has.

Comment · 6 years ago

It more about how difficult Savannah is to use which is why people use alternatives. Though the GNU project does evaluate whether a code hosting service is suitable. [0] They were also looking into hosting their own alternative to Savannah. [1]

[0] https://www.fsf.org/news/gnu-releases-ethical-evaluations-of...

[1] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/coming-soon-a-new-site-fo...

Comment · 6 years ago

There was a rust frontend for GCC[0]. Will need a lot to work though.

[0]: https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/RustFrontEnd

Comment · 6 years ago

It is because of the license. GTK's license is LGPLv2.1 or later[0]. The important part is later, It means you can update it automatically to any later version, especially if the new license is not compatible with the previous version. Qt does not offer their software with a similar license.

[0]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/tree/master#licensing-t...

Comment · 6 years ago

> And why can't something be open source when it's not free as in free beer

There is nothing preventing you from charging a fee for Open Source or even for Free Software. You only need to distribute source code to users of your software. That means it does not need to be publicly available on a site like Github. You need to remember that users who receive the software and source code are still allowed to distribute your software for a fee or even free. This method of selling software is not common at all though, so I can't really name any successful projects doing it.

> So why can't this software be called open source, when the source is... open?

The reason you can't call software like that as Open Source is because Open Source has a clear definition as defined by the Open Source Initiative[1]. Free Software has a definition as well[2]. The Open Source definition is a more expanded and detailed version of the Free Software's Four Freedoms. If the license you use for your software does not allow the things as described by those definitions, you can't call it Open Source or Free Software.

[1]:https://opensource.org/osd [2]:https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html