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It's actually Free Software, not just open source. MIT license.



I'm familiar with the philosophical differences between Free Software and Open Source.

But in this context you seem to imply that there are practical differences i.e: Not all Open Source licences are considered Free Software in the practical sense.

If that is the case, could you provide an example?


The open-source academical licences are a good example. For example, part of the Win32 kernel are open for academic and are heavily share between the classes, but the limitations are here.

For instance, this licence: http://opensource.org/licenses/AFL-3.0

It provide free usage, studying, display, publishing, but also explicitly says that some of the part could be binaries (machine-readable), you can't sell anything derivative, and the licence is personal with no right to give the licence to anyone else.

So, you can consult and modify in the frame of your academical work, but no more.


I'm not sure if you linked to the license you intended to - the license at that link doesn't seem to include any of the limitations you mention. If it did include those limitations, I don't think if would qualify as an open source license, either.


I guess he meant to link to the RPL, which is the only license that the OSI has approved, but not the FSF.


>> I'm familiar with the philosophical differences between Free Software and Open Source.

But in this context you seem to imply that there are practical differences i.e: Not all Open Source licences are considered Free Software in the practical sense.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was certifying all sorts of licenses as "open source" under their definition. Basically if you allowed people to see your source code it was considered open source. That's not really practical and most open source licenses had an agenda of the company retaining control, which means people can't really do what they want. To most developers there are basically the BSD/MIT licenses that allow you to do whatever you want, and the GPL/LGPL licenses that allow you to do what ever you want - so long as you pass that freedom on to your users. These are both forms of Free Software, though the distinction causes much argument. Every other "open source" license is generally more restrictive and meant for someone to retain ultimate control, including the old Microsoft licenses.

In my opinion the OSI did more harm to the movement than good by "certifying" a huge number of irrelevant licenses so companies could claim be doing the cool new thing. None of that code can be integrated into anything else under different terms - at least not without consulting a lawyer.


> Basically if you allowed people to see your source code it was considered open source.

This (premise of your entire post) is very much incorrect.

OSI has never certified the notorious MSFT "Shared Source" licenses that you are probably referring to.

Please read the Wikipedia article on the subject, you will find that the licenses that are certified by OSI are the same licenses that the FSF calls "free software", and the licenses that OSI didn't certify are "non-free" according to the FSF.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source

The OSI "Open Source Definition" criteria are based on the "Debian Free Sofware Guidelines", which are in turn inspired by the FSF's "Free Software Definition".

http://opensource.org/osd

In practice all 3 of these organizations tend to come to the same verdict, with very few exceptions in fringe cases (such as the GFDL).


Eh, most proponents of free software would in fact call this "just open source": MIT isn't copyleft.


Most proponents of free software would argue that the difference between free software and open source is a philosophical one, not a technical one [0]. Copyleft is preferable, but not mandatory, for a free software license; the most widely used non-copyleft free software licenses are recognized by such by the FSF [1].

[0] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html


Sure, but the post I replied to "corrected" the term open source to free software, which is strange for an MIT licensed project.


"Free software" has a narrower meaning in the context of the four freedoms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software#Definition


And if you follow your link, you'll see that the MIT license grants all these freedoms and is thus considered to be a Free Software license.




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