Generally, FOSS includes both copy-left stuff that is free as in speech, and licenses that are restrictive over what you can actually do with that source code.
This is not correct. In typical use, copyleft means that you have to redistribute it as free software (GPL and variations). The opposite is “permissive”, you can use the software commercially, and charge others to use it as closed source. Copyleft is good for developers, permissive is good for companies.
So “free as in speech” is not even a good analogy. “Liberated” is more like it, perhaps I will start using libre more strictly…
“Free Software,” “Open Source,” and “Free Open Source Software” all have the same denotation. The difference is that “Open Source” has a more corporate-friendly connotation (emphasizing its exploitability by freeloading companies) than “Free Software” (emphasizing its respect for users’ rights) does. “Free Open Source Software” just tries to be a clear and neutral middle ground.
Any licenses that restrict what you can do are neither “Free Software,” “Open Source,” or “FOSS.”
Any licenses that restrict what you can do are neither
I am not so sure. What about CC-BY-SA? Open source, share-alike, but restricts modifying the code. More broadly, from the start CC licenses were described as “Some rights reserved”.
Libre software restricts people from sharing code under another closed license. So I think that your statement is not correct either. FLOSS licenses can very much restrict what you can do, and do so very regularly.
What about CC-BY-SA? Open source, share-alike, but restricts modifying the code.
What? That’s not true at all. You can make derivative works with CC-BY-SA.
Edit: your comment was wrong in multiple ways, and I only addressed one before replying.
In addition to simply not saying what you claimed it says, CC-BY-SA is also not, in fact, “Open Source” because it doesn’t appear on the list of OSI-approved Open Source licenses. That means OSI either rejected it or didn’t evaluate it at all. (I assume the latter, in this case, because CC-BY-SA isn’t even intended for software source code to begin with!)
Libre software restricts people from sharing code under another closed license.
No, copyright law itself restricts people from sharing code. “Open Source” or “Free Software” licenses relax those restrictions. Restrictions are never added by the license, only conditions limiting when they may be relaxed.
No, copyright law itself restricts people from sharing code. “Open Source” or “Free Software” licenses relax those restrictions. Restrictions are never added by the license, only conditions limiting when they may be relaxed.
This is exactly why copyleft licenses are now implemented within the context of intellectual property law. You can’t have a socialist biodome specifically for code.
CC-BY-SA is also not, in fact, “Open Source” because it doesn’t appear on the list of OSI-approved Open Source licenses.
Any license that prohibits modification will do. As any license that prohibits redistribution under a closed license will also do.
EDIT: “do” = to refute your statement, from which you just so vehemently distanced yourself, lmao
I fear there’s a bit of wishful thinking interspersed here.
‘Open Source’ is a term, that means, that the Source code is accessible, but tells you nothing about the liberties that the license grants. There are plenty of proprietary projects that are Open Source in that sense, but with non-free licensing.
That might not be how the term was initially used, but that’s just how it is now.
The term FOSS exists specifically to distinguish it from that.
‘Open Source’ is a term, that means, that the Source code is accessible, but tells you nothing about the liberties that the license grants.
No it isn’t. “Open Source” is a term coined by the Open Source Initiative, and they control its definition. Every license that counts as “Open Source” according to OSI alsocounts as Free Software according to the Free Software Foundation.
You’re getting it confused with bullshit like “shared source” or “source available,” which are propagandistic terms designed to confuse people about proprietary software being freer than it actually is.
Every license that counts as “Open Source” according to OSI also counts as Free Software according to the Free Software Foundation.
Who is not authoritative on the issue. I might agree with the spirit of your comment, but I think it messes up an “ought to” with an “is a”. Let’s replay this: Every open source license should be a copyleft license. Sure! It should. Like all property should belong to the community.
But as it is right now, the creator has intellectual property on the code. They may choose to reserve none or some rights on it. But as long as F/L/OSS is defined within the framework of intellectual property, it is not true that “by definition every open source license is a copyleft license”. This is a fallacy.
(Sorry I wouldn’t bother to use the same terms you used. I mean the same things though.)
They may choose to reserve none or some rights on it. But as long as F/L/OSS is defined within the framework of intellectual property, it is not true that “by definition every open source license is a copyleft license”. This is a fallacy.
…and the rest of your paragraph confirms your lack of understanding, because the notion that I wrote anything resembling “by definition every open source license is a copyleft license” is nonsense.
(Sorry I wouldn’t bother to use the same terms you used. I mean the same things though.)
Words have meanings. You don’t get to just change them and pretend they mean the same things when they don’t!
No, that’s not true. The GPL imposes zero restrictions. Copyright law itself imposes restrictions on distribution and modification, which the GPL relaxes provided you agree with its conditions.
Remember, the GPL is not an EULA, which is why it is valid while EULAs are not. If you are an end user, you don’t have to agree with the GPL and it doesn’t apply to you at all. It only kicks in when you want to do something that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law.
Say I’m writing software, and I choose to use a GPL library. Am I unrestricted in what I can subsequently do wiþ my software?
Copyright law has no specifics about source code redistribution. Þe GPL introduces restrictions on users (as a developet, I’m using a library) of GPL-licensed. Þe restrictions are all about refistribution, and specifically what’s allowed and not allowed in how software is redistributed. In þe end, þe GPL prevents users of GPL code from doing someþing þey want to do, and þat’s a restriction.
A law against murder may be a good law, but it still a restriction. Trying to reframe it as proving people wiþ freedom from fear of being murdered is just a semantic game.
Say I’m writing software, and I choose to use a GPL library. Am I unrestricted in what I can subsequently do wiþ my software?
Sure!
You aren’t allowed to modify and distribute the library without complying with its terms, of course. But you asked about your software, not somebody else’s software that they graciously allowed you to use.
Ambiguity is inherent in all human languages, agreed. But English is one of the most fucked up languages, and in many ways different than most other languages.
Possible reason: it is a hybrid language over-prescribed by racist and classist institutions, which currently serves as a lingua-franca and still rapidly evolves because of all the tech and marketing that happens in the US (in other words, what the fuck is a “slopometer”).
Well, I look up the community, no posts. I look up your post history, your sole contributions are calls for a badlinguistics community, or calling out comments for being badlinguistics. I find your crusade rather amusing, and I am here to respond to any possible criticism you have about my greatlinguistics.
While I fully realize that this response is probably a waste of my time, hopefully this comment will at least be useful to someone else reading the thread.
English is one of the most fucked up languages, and in many ways different than most other languages.
Imma need a source for this claim, as well as a useful definition of a “fucked up language”. Linguists unanimously agree that English is a mostly unremarkable language, outside of maybe its dummy-do support phenomena. Its /r/ phoneme is somewhat unusual, but nowhere near the least common sounds in human language.
English is, linguistically speaking, a pretty boring language, all things considered.
Possible reason: it is a hybrid language over-prescribed by racist and classist institutions, which currently serves as a lingua-franca and still rapidly evolves because of all the tech and marketing that happens in the US (in other words, what the fuck is a “slopometer”).
English is not a hybrid language. There are some who have argued that it is a creole (see here), but that hypothesis has mostly fallen out of favor among modern linguists, and either way I highly doubt that as a .ml you want to say that English is fucked up because it’s a creole (implying that all other creoles are similarly “fucked up” languages, whatever that means).
And, while English does have a large percentage of loanwords (over 70%), that’s nowhere near as many as, for example, Armenian, with more than 90% of its vocabulary being borrowings. Again, English is unremarkable here.
Next, all human languages show the results of prescriptivism - English is, again, painfully boring.
Hundreds of languages have served as linguae francae over the millennia - I don’t suppose you’d want to say that Swahili is a fucked up language just because it’s currently also a lingua franca? Once again, humans finding means to communicate is a universal linguistic phenomenon, and is not indicative of “fucked-up-edness”, whatever that is.
Whether English (or any other language for that matter) evolves more quickly due to technology is a popular and divisive topic, with good evidence on both sides of the argument. It seems likely that tech does speed up some aspects of language change while also slowing down other aspects. Stating a conclusion here would be premature, but either way, this behavior is identical in all languages that see heavy tech use.
“Slopometer” is a neologism, which, again, all natural human languages have.
“/c/[insert_community_name]” is not necessarily linking that community, only invoking it to illustrate a point. “Badlinguistics” was a popular community on the other website for discussing comments like yours.
Speaking of which, your comment is badlinguistics because it clearly shows a complete lack of familiarity with the modern scientific study of language. Everything you said was not only wrong, but immediately and obviously wrong to anyone who has taken even an introductory linguistics course.
Isn’t it usually the opposite, gratis (because if it’s open source, you could just build it yourself, unless there’s a proprietary build env or hosted env) but not necessarily libre (because of the license?)
So wouldn’t gratis normally be the superset of libre.
Then there’s a set of gratis but not open source… someone should do a venn diagram.
Wait, but persona non gratis can’t possibly mean a person who isn’t free as in beer, can it? You can’t have Me for free, I’ll only sell My sex for money.
Actually, both “persona non grata” (latin has cases) and “gratis coffee/beer/bootloader” both make sense.
Just convert the “x is gratis” into “you’re welcome to [relevant-action-verb] x”.
As in, “The kernel is gratis” = “You’re free to [use] the Kernel” (which is basically “it’s free” in everyday english).
For “Persona non grata” it would be “(You’re a) person not welcome (to [come] here)”.
This is what it originally meant. It has nothing to do with price and everything to do with gratuity. I (a provider) am grateful to you and welcome you to use/come/see/do/whatever.
“Gratis” would be the ketchup packet at McDonalds - they’re happy you paid for a burger so they’ll give you a ketcup packet as they’re grateful you did.
… such as?
“Linux requires constant fixing.”
Use one of the stable distros. You generally never have to worry about breakage if you don’t go looking for it.
Linux actually has a large swath of testers using rolling release who we’ve tricked into feeling very superior than the rest of us. /s
Wine is not an emulator.
Linux doesn’t require programming knowledge to use, just computer knowledge at most.
I seen a few go opposite end and claim “you do not need computer knowledge, you can just ask chatgpt for the commands and copy-paste.”
These two are equivalent so why the fuck does every single guide online use former?
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade sudo apt upgrade -UThe second way doesn’t work on older systems before they added it. I have some Debian servers where it doesn’t work
Ah wow a pedantic semantical objection, that’s egregious as fuck that they thought it was something that is identical to a layman
Because I understand the former
The latter can both summon nasal demons and not summon nasal demons. It is in a state superposition until an observer consults the manual
Not in apt manpage.
But in fact at man apt-get.
I blame the feds.
how the fuck is my apartment going to get clean then
Confusing “FOSS” with “free software” comes to mind.
But the F in FOSS stands for free. I understand that there’s a lot more to unpack in the OS part of FOSS, but still, it’s not quite wrong.
The F in FOSS stands for Libre
Confusing “FOSS” with just “Open Source” seems like the more typical offender.
Count Me in the confused group, I thought FOSS was free as in speech software
Generally, FOSS includes both copy-left stuff that is free as in speech, and licenses that are restrictive over what you can actually do with that source code.
This is not correct. In typical use, copyleft means that you have to redistribute it as free software (GPL and variations). The opposite is “permissive”, you can use the software commercially, and charge others to use it as closed source. Copyleft is good for developers, permissive is good for companies.
So “free as in speech” is not even a good analogy. “Liberated” is more like it, perhaps I will start using libre more strictly…
No it doesn’t.
“Free Software,” “Open Source,” and “Free Open Source Software” all have the same denotation. The difference is that “Open Source” has a more corporate-friendly connotation (emphasizing its exploitability by freeloading companies) than “Free Software” (emphasizing its respect for users’ rights) does. “Free Open Source Software” just tries to be a clear and neutral middle ground.
Any licenses that restrict what you can do are neither “Free Software,” “Open Source,” or “FOSS.”
I am not so sure. What about CC-BY-SA? Open source, share-alike, but restricts modifying the code. More broadly, from the start CC licenses were described as “Some rights reserved”.
Libre software restricts people from sharing code under another closed license. So I think that your statement is not correct either. FLOSS licenses can very much restrict what you can do, and do so very regularly.
What? That’s not true at all. You can make derivative works with CC-BY-SA.
Edit: your comment was wrong in multiple ways, and I only addressed one before replying.
In addition to simply not saying what you claimed it says, CC-BY-SA is also not, in fact, “Open Source” because it doesn’t appear on the list of OSI-approved Open Source licenses. That means OSI either rejected it or didn’t evaluate it at all. (I assume the latter, in this case, because CC-BY-SA isn’t even intended for software source code to begin with!)
No, copyright law itself restricts people from sharing code. “Open Source” or “Free Software” licenses relax those restrictions. Restrictions are never added by the license, only conditions limiting when they may be relaxed.
No.
This is exactly why copyleft licenses are now implemented within the context of intellectual property law. You can’t have a socialist biodome specifically for code.
Any license that prohibits modification will do. As any license that prohibits redistribution under a closed license will also do.
EDIT: “do” = to refute your statement, from which you just so vehemently distanced yourself, lmao
The rest of your word salad isn’t even worth responding to.
I fear there’s a bit of wishful thinking interspersed here.
‘Open Source’ is a term, that means, that the Source code is accessible, but tells you nothing about the liberties that the license grants. There are plenty of proprietary projects that are Open Source in that sense, but with non-free licensing. That might not be how the term was initially used, but that’s just how it is now.
The term FOSS exists specifically to distinguish it from that.
No it isn’t. “Open Source” is a term coined by the Open Source Initiative, and they control its definition. Every license that counts as “Open Source” according to OSI also counts as Free Software according to the Free Software Foundation.
You’re getting it confused with bullshit like “shared source” or “source available,” which are propagandistic terms designed to confuse people about proprietary software being freer than it actually is.
Who is not authoritative on the issue. I might agree with the spirit of your comment, but I think it messes up an “ought to” with an “is a”. Let’s replay this: Every open source license should be a copyleft license. Sure! It should. Like all property should belong to the community.
But as it is right now, the creator has intellectual property on the code. They may choose to reserve none or some rights on it. But as long as F/L/OSS is defined within the framework of intellectual property, it is not true that “by definition every open source license is a copyleft license”. This is a fallacy.
(Sorry I wouldn’t bother to use the same terms you used. I mean the same things though.)
Except they are, because they’re the ones who coined the term.
The second you use the term “intellectual property[sic],” it tells me you either don’t understand what you’re talking about well enough to discuss it with precision, or you’re fatally biased about the issue…
…and the rest of your paragraph confirms your lack of understanding, because the notion that I wrote anything resembling “by definition every open source license is a copyleft license” is nonsense.
Words have meanings. You don’t get to just change them and pretend they mean the same things when they don’t!
Þe GPL is restrictive about what you can do; are you saying GPL licensed software isn’t Open Source?
No, that’s not true. The GPL imposes zero restrictions. Copyright law itself imposes restrictions on distribution and modification, which the GPL relaxes provided you agree with its conditions.
Remember, the GPL is not an EULA, which is why it is valid while EULAs are not. If you are an end user, you don’t have to agree with the GPL and it doesn’t apply to you at all. It only kicks in when you want to do something that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law.
Say I’m writing software, and I choose to use a GPL library. Am I unrestricted in what I can subsequently do wiþ my software?
Copyright law has no specifics about source code redistribution. Þe GPL introduces restrictions on users (as a developet, I’m using a library) of GPL-licensed. Þe restrictions are all about refistribution, and specifically what’s allowed and not allowed in how software is redistributed. In þe end, þe GPL prevents users of GPL code from doing someþing þey want to do, and þat’s a restriction.
A law against murder may be a good law, but it still a restriction. Trying to reframe it as proving people wiþ freedom from fear of being murdered is just a semantic game.
Sure!
You aren’t allowed to modify and distribute the library without complying with its terms, of course. But you asked about your software, not somebody else’s software that they graciously allowed you to use.
English is a horrible language full of ambiguity. F/LOSS is libre, but not necessarily gratis.
All natural human languages have ambiguity. English is no better or worse than any other.
Ambiguity is inherent in all human languages, agreed. But English is one of the most fucked up languages, and in many ways different than most other languages.
Possible reason: it is a hybrid language over-prescribed by racist and classist institutions, which currently serves as a lingua-franca and still rapidly evolves because of all the tech and marketing that happens in the US (in other words, what the fuck is a “slopometer”).
/c/badlinguistics
Well, I look up the community, no posts. I look up your post history, your sole contributions are calls for a badlinguistics community, or calling out comments for being badlinguistics. I find your crusade rather amusing, and I am here to respond to any possible criticism you have about my greatlinguistics.
While I fully realize that this response is probably a waste of my time, hopefully this comment will at least be useful to someone else reading the thread.
Imma need a source for this claim, as well as a useful definition of a “fucked up language”. Linguists unanimously agree that English is a mostly unremarkable language, outside of maybe its dummy-do support phenomena. Its /r/ phoneme is somewhat unusual, but nowhere near the least common sounds in human language.
English is, linguistically speaking, a pretty boring language, all things considered.
English is not a hybrid language. There are some who have argued that it is a creole (see here), but that hypothesis has mostly fallen out of favor among modern linguists, and either way I highly doubt that as a .ml you want to say that English is fucked up because it’s a creole (implying that all other creoles are similarly “fucked up” languages, whatever that means).
And, while English does have a large percentage of loanwords (over 70%), that’s nowhere near as many as, for example, Armenian, with more than 90% of its vocabulary being borrowings. Again, English is unremarkable here.
Next, all human languages show the results of prescriptivism - English is, again, painfully boring.
Hundreds of languages have served as linguae francae over the millennia - I don’t suppose you’d want to say that Swahili is a fucked up language just because it’s currently also a lingua franca? Once again, humans finding means to communicate is a universal linguistic phenomenon, and is not indicative of “fucked-up-edness”, whatever that is.
Whether English (or any other language for that matter) evolves more quickly due to technology is a popular and divisive topic, with good evidence on both sides of the argument. It seems likely that tech does speed up some aspects of language change while also slowing down other aspects. Stating a conclusion here would be premature, but either way, this behavior is identical in all languages that see heavy tech use.
“Slopometer” is a neologism, which, again, all natural human languages have.
“/c/[insert_community_name]” is not necessarily linking that community, only invoking it to illustrate a point. “Badlinguistics” was a popular community on the other website for discussing comments like yours.
Speaking of which, your comment is badlinguistics because it clearly shows a complete lack of familiarity with the modern scientific study of language. Everything you said was not only wrong, but immediately and obviously wrong to anyone who has taken even an introductory linguistics course.
Isn’t it usually the opposite, gratis (because if it’s open source, you could just build it yourself, unless there’s a proprietary build env or hosted env) but not necessarily libre (because of the license?)
So wouldn’t gratis normally be the superset of libre.
Then there’s a set of gratis but not open source… someone should do a venn diagram.
I could potentially just say it costs money to use this software, but allow you to build it yourself if you don’t want to
It’s called Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in case you were wondering
RHEL contains non-FOSS components, and so is not FOSS.
Okay, I’d have to think of a more pure example, but you get the idea. Downloads and support not free, but compile it yourself if you want
What’s gratis?
It means ‘free of charge’. It’s an English word, but pretty rare, I think. More common in other languages.
it’s a latin loanword if you want to get all linguistical about it
Wait, but persona non gratis can’t possibly mean a person who isn’t free as in beer, can it? You can’t have Me for free, I’ll only sell My sex for money.
Persona non grata means person not welcome.
Gratis is free of charge, or you are welcome to take it.
I am probably just old, but I remember the days when “free as in speech, not free as in beer” was enough explanation.
Actually, both “persona non grata” (latin has cases) and “gratis coffee/beer/bootloader” both make sense.
Just convert the “x is gratis” into “you’re welcome to [relevant-action-verb] x”.
As in, “The kernel is gratis” = “You’re free to [use] the Kernel” (which is basically “it’s free” in everyday english).
For “Persona non grata” it would be “(You’re a) person not welcome (to [come] here)”.
This is what it originally meant. It has nothing to do with price and everything to do with gratuity. I (a provider) am grateful to you and welcome you to use/come/see/do/whatever.
“Gratis” would be the ketchup packet at McDonalds - they’re happy you paid for a burger so they’ll give you a ketcup packet as they’re grateful you did.
Not sure if you’re joking or not, but it’s persona non grata.
Ohhhh, right, thanks.
Free as in speech (software) is nowadays usually referred to as libre.