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"I support it only if it's open source" should be a more common viewpoint (vitalik.eth.limo)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51038205

What are your thoughts? Any counter-counter points to the author's response to most concerns regarding open source?

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[–] 14 points 1 year ago (10 children)

If it's non profit AND not open source, it seems a bit shady, doesn't it?

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Maybe, but not necessarily. You see, there could be plenty of reasons to protect ones code...

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    I don't know what could be the reason for a non-profit to not open-source the code of a publicly available tool/product, except to hide or keep their property

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Is that not a good reason, if you are trying to help people, and competitors likely would damage that mission? There's a thousand possible reasons, and I really wonder why you can't imagine any of them...

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Because if you care about user you should be at least transparent to them, in your example you could make your codebase open-source with a license restricting it for commercial uses

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    You can't. Blocking commercial use stops a licence being open source. If you don't want commercial competition, then you need copyleft, so anyone using your code has to share their modifications with whoever they give binaries to. If they end up using your code to make a better product, then it'll have to be open source, too, and you can incorporate the improvements back into your version.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Maybe I'm wrong but they are many type of "open-source" licenses, sure they do not respect the GNU Open Source but they are pretty reasonable and I think that it exists license that do not allow you to use it for commercial uses

    EDIT : my bad, I've seen that making the commercial uses forbidden is no more open source license but CC-NC so you're right :)

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    @foremanguy92_ @AnyOldName3 yes, unfortunately, you are wrong. The term "open source" also contains a clause about not restricting the use. Think "open cage", not just "open book".

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Only some definitions of open source state that. The concept has existed long before the free software foundation.

    While personally agree with the FSF. To say it is an exclusive definition of open source is just outright false.

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