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FSF on OnlyOffice/EuroOffice: You cannot use the GNU (A)GPL to take software freedom away (www.fsf.org)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/opensource@programming.dev
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[–] -2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I've grown to like the freedom concept in software less and less over time. Software is the one set of technology anyone can develop without the need of extensive material resources, and yet we have standardized the idea that its distribution and use must be apolitical and open to anybody or anything. We could have a beautiful system like this for, lets say, the pharma industry. Have all R&D in medicine be unrestrictable and public. But we only do this in software, and if you attempt to license stating that "this software is forbidden to use for military purposes" the FSF will look at you with discontent because your software is not free. Their argument for this is that if we let "good" licenses break freedom, then we legitimize everyone doing it, including bad actors. Same centrist logic avid las respecting people uses all the time. This gives me a bad feeling.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Same goes for open-source though in the "no military usage" example, as the OSI says "No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups" and "The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor"

    In euro office's case, the fsf acknowledges a lot of licenses as free and many allow additional terms (MIT for example). The AGPL just isn't one of them, and if onlyoffice decided that they did want to add rules, they could've chose another free license.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    Cooperation and sharing performs significantly better for collective gains. This applies to all kinds of concepts. Science, public infrastructure, common goods, common resources, governance, trade agreements, EU, medicine, software…

    Where it becomes problematic is when parties reap gains without participating. Using science to develop products and gain further knowledge without sharing them, using public infrastructure without paying taxes, using common infrastructure and frameworks without committing to them, nationalism, monopolies on medicine, proprietary software and platforms that are not cooperative…

    Much of our transformation and development speed and gains in the last century has been in a framework of cooperation. In the current global politics, we can see and imagine what rejecting cooperation could lead to and where it could lead us to.

    FOSS is great for the same reasons as other forms of cooperation: Collective gains.

    Unfortunately, we have not solved the issue of beneficiaries that don't actively participate and contribute yet.

    In patent law, you publish your findings and get a timespan of authoritative use and control but at the same time commit to it being publicly accessible and at some point usable. Some software licenses attempt to do the same.

    In music licensing, there's frameworks for collective licensing.

    Some frameworks use centralized/government regulation and prosecution to ensure play-fair systems. (To varying degrees and success, obviously.)

    I get where you're coming from, but I disagree [with disliking the software freedom]. The upsides and collective gains of software freedom are undeniable. Where we need to do and establish more, and some things are happening in some places, is to ensure a positive collaborative environment overall.

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