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In other words, you don't actually believe in free software. I recommend you read the definition of Free software [0].

> The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

I think people slap on MIT/Apache license without thinking about it too much, and then get salty when people use that license as intended for profit. This is why proprietary licensing exists, this is why the GNU GPL (copyleft) licenses exist.

You cannot have your cake (free software) and want to eat it too (get paid when someone wants to use it for their profit).

[0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html




It's actually not that simple, the freedoms are conditioned to satisfy them all, not just one. But even then Free Software philosophy is not ideologically pure. In particular gaining competitive advantage is fundamental to players in market economies and inherently requires not letting competitors have something you have. Applying that to free software means that using it for commercial purposes requires doing it in a such way that couples it with something that doesn't respect user freedom and doesn't let anyone to easily run something similar, rendering the whole free software point moot and turning it into mere exploitation. To respect user freedom you need a lot more conditions, at least let any user get all the software coupled with free software and easily run it on its own hardware, i.e. make licenses very viral, force open sourcing all the software coupled with free software or sharing any indirect data dependencies. But here's the thing, this actually removes commercial incentive, because you can never gain competitive advantage with such software, the only way to use it commercially is to pay for an alternative license. So in a way, having your cake and eating it is the only pure free software.


> doesn't respect user freedom and doesn't let anyone to easily run something similar, rendering the whole free software point moot and turning it into mere exploitation.

You are discussing licensed projects made later down the line using an Open Source licensed project. Those projects have no obligation to maintain the same freedoms. None. They only have to respect the terms of the license, such as Apache2's restrictions against branding usage, etc.

1) The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

2) The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

By using an Open Source license, anyone can take your code and do whatever they want with it. There is nothing here about "exploitation" or anything arbitrary like that.

The only way to guarantee freedoms down the line is to use a Copyleft license, which some might argue isn't really "free" since it restricts how people can actually use it. The AGPL technically violates freedom 0, for example.

If you don't like people doing whatever they want with your code, don't Open Source it. It's not rocket science. If you're against an oppressive regime using your code to subjugate people, then don't Open Source your code. Getting all up in arms about a company taking your code and running with it demonstrates an understanding of licensing and what open source licenses do. It's not a bug.

Not that any of this would matter anyway since who among us actually has the funds to take people to court and demonstrate a violation of our AGPLv3 Copy-Left licensed intellectual property?




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