[License-discuss] OSI's purely-neutral policy position on production of proprietary software (was Re: Query on "delayed open source" licensing)

[Russell Nelson]

It's harmful, but it's part of what people give up in order to get the 
benefit of whatever the proprietary software does. Just like you get 
"free" OTA TV (apologies to our British friends) by having commercials 
interjected. You get "free" web applications by having commercials in 
the interstices. Just like you have to pay for proprietary software. 
Just like you can get proprietary software bundled with a hardware 
purchase. All these things are harmful to one degree or another, because 
whatever you give up in order to get this software, you could have done 
something else with it.

Or you could live with unicorns, rainbows, and rock candy mountains and 
only use open source software. Your payment for doing so is giving up 
whatever benefits are provided by the proprietary software. There MUST 
be benefits, otherwise why would anybody use proprietary software?

Today's lesson in economics is brought to you by the Angry Economist.

On 10/31/23 14:05, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
> not *fundamentally* harmful, just harmful :) The OSI is not going 
> around wagging fingers.