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It's deliciously ironic how a campaign to dilute the meaning of free software ended up getting diluted itself.


It's gratifying. I used to tilt at windmills on HN about this and people would be telling me with absolute condescension how the ship had sailed regarding the definition of Open Source, relegating my own life's work to anachronism.

People slowly waking up to how daft and hypecycle misusing a term was all along has been amazing.


We must all choose which hill to die on, and I am glad to have met someone else on that same hill, comrade.

https://www.downloadableisnotopensource.org/


[flagged]


I think exactly like this. If I created a tool and it were used for free by billion dollar corporations to enrich themselves, I would consider it a personal loss.


Personally I open source things often specifically to kill the value proposition of companies trying to keep people in their walled gardens.

My post got flagged proving my point.

The GPL is still the answer. Corporate lawyers still avoid it at all costs. The simple requirement that any derivative works bear the same license has always been the key to sustaining the movement, and the whole push toward permissive licensing has been driven by the companies that want to leech.


At this point the bare minimum for anything new is probably AGPL. Even that needs to be reinforced against hyperscalers and LLMs.


Corporate leeches hate this one trick.



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