<div dir="ltr"><div dir="auto">On Sun, Aug 30, 2026 at 2:51\u202fPM Pamela Chestek <<a href="mailto:pamela@chesteklegal.com" target="_blank">pamela@chesteklegal.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div>
<div>McCoy, you asked for a definition of
"software freedom" and Moming's response is similar to my
thoughts:<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>On 8/29/2026 11:10 PM, Moming Duan
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p style="text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none"><span style="font-family:-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:15px;color:rgb(29,29,43)">Here
is a simple test of my own:
<b style="font-family:-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif">if 99% of the world's models were released under license X,
would our ecosystem be better off?</b></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p>My premise is that the everyone benefits from a software commons,
so, does the license encourage or discourage sharing? </p></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><p dir="auto">"Software
freedom" is the ability to do anything you want with the software.
A few conditions/impairments are allowed because they indirectly
encourage the growth of the software commons - giving credit
(copyright notice/attribution), telling people what their rights
are (the license), the appropriate distribution of risk (the
"as-is" rep and disclaimer of warranty), and compulsory sharing
(copyleft). The balance is very delicate. It's questionable
whether the GPLv3, and then the AGPL, contribute to the health of
the open source software commons because they are commonly used as
the antagonist to encourage people to get a commercial license
instead. It does, though, seem that lever isn't as successful
anymore, since people are more willing to comply with the copyleft
licenses and these two licenses are more often being used for
their intended benefit. </p>
<p>This, I think, is the piece that's missing from the OSD. We've
seen the OSD gamed when it has been formally met but it is
nevertheless clear that the license is designed to give one entity
superior rights in the software or has mechanisms that will
discourage the use of the software. "Providing software freedom"
as a requirement is a check on that. </p></div></blockquote><div><span style="background-color:transparent">FWIW any or all of Pam's formulations of "encouraging sharing of software" or "contributing to the health of the software commons" or "protecting the open software ecosystem" (from an <a href="http://opensource.com">opensource.com</a> essay of yours, Pam, IIRC) would be vastly superior to "providing software freedom". <br><br>Besides the obvious point that software doesn't have freedom, any of those would be much clearer to argue about, with less baggage. (There would still be plenty of arguing; all of those still require value judgments. But at least it'd be a value that one can attempt to decipher from the words.)</span></div></div></div>
</div>