Re:Open Source Bait and Switch
by kazinator on Tuesday September 27, 2022 @02:39AM
(#32992147)
> That's not a FOSS license to begin with.
Your understanding is deficient. Some of the most popular free licenses like GPL and BSD don't restrict use. Users don't have to enter into the licensing agreement at all, only those who redistribute.
By using the software, you implicitly agree to the liability disclaimers, and that's about it.
All of the conditions in the license have to do with redistributing.
Licenses that restrict use in any way (e.g. "free for non-commercial use") are not free licenses.
> The company can't go on your disk and edit the license after you obtained the software and the license.
That's just a practical matter. If a license is revoked, the software will continue to be redistributed or used by people who don't even know about it. That doesn't mean it's legal.
The same thing could happen to software that was improperly licensed to begin with. E.g. a rogue employee took some code without company authorization and put it out with a free license. They can't go into people's disks and erase the bits, but the software is not legally free.
If you write a program and freely license it, such that Debian or Fedora pick it up, and then you write them a letter saying that the program isn't actually freely licensed, that it was a mistake, they will drop the thing like a hot potato.
The GNU project requires signed copyright assignments from contributors who make more than a trivial change. That protects (or hopefully protects) the projects from backpedaling problems.
Your understanding is deficient. Some of the most popular free licenses like GPL and BSD don't restrict use. Users don't have to enter into the licensing agreement at all, only those who redistribute.
By using the software, you implicitly agree to the liability disclaimers, and that's about it.
All of the conditions in the license have to do with redistributing.
Licenses that restrict use in any way (e.g. "free for non-commercial use") are not free licenses.
> The company can't go on your disk and edit the license after you obtained the software and the license.
That's just a practical matter. If a license is revoked, the software will continue to be redistributed or used by people who don't even know about it. That doesn't mean it's legal.
The same thing could happen to software that was improperly licensed to begin with. E.g. a rogue employee took some code without company authorization and put it out with a free license. They can't go into people's disks and erase the bits, but the software is not legally free.
If you write a program and freely license it, such that Debian or Fedora pick it up, and then you write them a letter saying that the program isn't actually freely licensed, that it was a mistake, they will drop the thing like a hot potato.
The GNU project requires signed copyright assignments from contributors who make more than a trivial change. That protects (or hopefully protects) the projects from backpedaling problems.