this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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This whole discussion is like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It depends completely on how you define open source, and there is no single universally agreed upon definition. Per this article, there are over 80 variations of open source licenses all with different term and conditions. Some are more permissive, some less so. Yet they can all be considered a variation of open source, though I'm anticipating you wouldn't agree? For this particular app, there are some restrictions in place aimed to protect users from malicious forks. IMO this is a good thing. I can't understand why you are acting like the definition police here, it seems very pedantic tbh.
There is an overwhelmingly agreed-upon definition. Look at who agrees with it: https://opensource.org/authority/
And who doesn't agree? Historically, a few of the giant software companies who were threatened by the free software movement thought that "open source" was a way for them to talk the talk without walking the walk. However, years ago, even they all eventually agreed about OSI's definition and today they use terms like source-available software for their products that don't meet it.
Today it is only misinformed people like yourself, and grifters trying to profit off of the positive perception of the term. I'm assuming Louis Rossman is in the former category too; we'll see in the near future if he acknowledges that the FUTO license is not open source and/or relicenses the project under an open source license.
There are many open source licenses, and many non-open-source licenses. there is a list of licenses which OSI has analyzed and found to meet their definition; licenses which aren't on that list can be open source too... but to see if they are, you would need to read the license and the definition.
Have you read The Open Source Definition? I'm assuming not.
It's because (1) FUTO are deceiving their customers by claiming that their product is something which it isn't, and (2) they're harming the free and open source software movements by telling people that terms mean things contrary to what they actually mean.
You make some good points, but whether it exactly meets every criteria of open source software as per that definition or not, I really can't bring myself to care that much either way. I get that it's important to you, and that's fine, but not everyone cares that much about it. People can read and vet the source code, the intention of the project seems good, and the intention of the authors in deviating slightly from pure open source principles seems to be to protect their users from scammy clones, which also seems fine with me. TBH we're not really into strictly following the letter of the law in the pirate community, and if this app helps people to avoid surveillance capitalism and puts even the slightest dent in Google's massive profits then I'm all for it. Anyways, have a good one.
saying that prohibiting redistribution is just "deviating slightly from pure open source principles" is like saying that a dish with a bit of meat in it is just "deviating slightly" from a vegetarian recipe.
if you saw a restaurant labeling their food as vegetarian because their dishes were based on vegetarian recipes, but had some meat added, would you say that it seems like their intentions are good?
As I said in another comment, the way free open source software projects should (and can, and do) generally do this is using trademark law. He could license it under any free software license but require derivatives to change the name to avoid misleading or confusing users. This is what Firefox and many other projects do.
In the video announcing the project Louis Rossmann explicitly says he intends to vigorously enforce this license. Since it is a copyright license, the only ways of actually enforcing it are to send DMCA takedowns and/or sue people for copyright infringement.
What fresh hell of goalpost moving is this? You're so bad faith.