OpenSource may not disallow it

Daniil Kulchenko dkulchenko at gmail.com
Sun Mar 15 16:05:52 UTC 2009


>
> HDE Weird wrote:
>
>> One question about OpenSource and its definition. If I did understand it
>> correctly, an OpenSource license does not ever disallow people doing
>> anything using OpenSource software, otherwise it is not an OpenSource
>> license. So, an OpenSource license may not disallow users breking the
>> OpenSource license, like including parts of OpenSource code in commercial
>> closed-source programs, if they do it using open-source programs. Right?
>>
>
You said "an Open Source license does not ever disallow people doing
anything using Open Source software", which is not true. An Open Source
license gives you certain freedoms (use, modify, build upon, produce
derivative works, etc.), and (depending on the specific license) may or may
not place restrictions on how you may use those freedoms, which may include
disallowing you to use open source code in commercial programs. The license
does not (necessarily) give you permission to do "anything using OSS".
Allowing you to do anything with software is not open source, it is pretty
much public domain, which is not the same.

Regards,
Daniil.
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