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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Free software is not about free of charge, but about freedom. If you publish open source software under a license which allows commercial use or selling the software, you have given consent. If you don‘t like that, change the license. (Users will still be able to use the software for free if they choose to compile it themself, because the source code is available.

    Redhat does exactly what you are describing: Packageing open source software into a paid Linux distribution and I would say they had an immense net positive effect on Linux doing this. I believe that this the point. Don‘t be an asshole. If you partly profit of someone else open source software, give them money, bug reports, bug fixes, recognition, etc. Be part of the community.




  • Not quite, it‘s only restricting competitors and so all companies and home labbers can still use it for free and contribute as in free speech.

    However this can bring a lot more financial sustainability to a project. I don‘t know the specifics, but the main problem is that companies make profit of the software, but don’t invest enough money back into the product. This cannot be good for users. Open source must be financially stable.

    Also right now all those competitors (and users) can create a fork and maintain it. So it is up to the community what will happen to the project.