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0 pointsmonocasa4y ago0 comments

No, it's that there a definition of free software based in the four freedoms that the licences only approximate.

That's why GPL has an 'or later' clause, to patch fix issues when people find out ways to remove the four freedoms while complying with the letter of the license.

So I'm specifically not making the argument that "FOSS licenses are perfectly infallible", only that everything proprietary licenses do, FOSS licenses and support contracts do better from the user's perspective.

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kube-system4y ago· 1 in thread

Software licenses are a legal document. Those legal documents are defined by the terms within them. One may argue that it isn't "in the spirit of of what RMS intended", but legally speaking, RMS's opinions have no relevance to a contract he isn't a party to.

If MIT/Apache/BSD/GPL, etc don't qualify as licenses that protect "the four freedoms" then the OSI and FSF need to update their list of approved licenses.

monocasaOP4y ago

GPL they do update. That's the point of the "or later" part.

BSD/MIT/Apache is compatible with the four freedoms, but don't do all of the work to enforce them. That's what the FSF means by approved; these licenses are approved for being incorporated into GPL code.

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