Free and Open Source Software

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Florp, the Firefox fork with an awful name, is fully source-available again (github.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Aatube@kbin.melroy.org to c/foss

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The repository for the previously private submodule is still called Floorp-private-components, though it's public.

https://blog.ablaze.one/4125/2024-03-11/ is a maintainer's official response to... Reddit, which crossposted me apparently. Hooray!

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[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'd understand if you said that the FSF feels like communism, but how the heck is that specific philosophy in support of selling FOSS software communism?

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

GNU philosophy feels like communism. Also that standard of purity - no exceptions.

If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license

This leads to people conflating non-free and opensource or tightly coupling opensource to FLOSS - even though F and L are qualifiers for OSS. OSS isn't forcibly F and L. "X is not opensource because you can't use it commercially nor sell it".

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[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

FOSS was created as a compromise between the FSF and the OSI, and the latter's Open Source Definition includes this:

Free redistribution: The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Keep in mind that the OSI was made for the purposes of popularizing the term "open source", which was created because some wanted it to be more pragmatic than political. This is a consensus.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's really great for people living in the 1990s. However for people and businesses in the now, with megacorps taking advantage of their dominant positions to sell an opensource product without contributing back and killing the business that provides the opensource product, hanging on to a lucid dream mean the death of the opensource product and loss of livelihoods.
Staying purist in the face of reality is one thing: delusional.

Maybe someday we'll have the alternative of "The morgue is full of people who had the right of way" for FLOSS purists who didn't want to give in to reality.

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[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Could you provide an example: Ideally a copyleft one

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