Write Free Software

The fourth freedom is rephrased as the &quot;right to collaborate&quot;. Yeah, right, but the official &quot;definition&quot; is pretty clear to me so I don&#x27;t see the point in re-writing it.<p>Moreover, but in my own opinion, nowadays free software is more about the obligation to share the modifications. I gather that many know what open source is, but that obligation, is crucially important and embodies the <i>political</i> statement of the FSF. It&#x27;s what puts free software truly apart (and makes it great, IMHO). So I&#x27;d move the copyleft explanation higher in the list, closer to the 4 freedoms.

Unironically, AGPL3 is the best license. Even if you don&#x27;t believe in the principals of free software, it has a lot going for it: Unlike MIT, you get full access to GPL3 and Apache licensed software, no need to worry about relicensing your code, no need to worry about derivative works or anything, just set it and forget it. In addition, corporations will avoid you like the plague. No need to worry about breaking anything, tinker away on your project freely without concern for backwards compatibility.<p>MIT is free as in free tech support, the sooner people accept that the better off we&#x27;ll all be.

&gt; Generally speaking, all open source software is free software, and vice versa.<p>(From the tooltip in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;writefreesoftware.org&#x2F;learn&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;writefreesoftware.org&#x2F;learn&#x2F;</a>.) This seems to be the most objectionable statement made, though it is properly hedged. The description in the paragraph above it is pretty unobjectionable, too.

It’s a bit disappointing to see MIT and BSD still being recommended in the “permissive license” category for new projects. Their shortcomings are pretty well known by this point, but this is a good summary: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;writing.kemitchell.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;09&#x2F;Deprecation-Notice.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;writing.kemitchell.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;09&#x2F;Deprecation-Notice...</a>

If you do get involved, I would use the GPLv3 for your code. Read this &quot;more RMS&quot; for my reason:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36389805">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36389805</a>

Not sure to what degree Drew Devault is involved in this project, if at all or entirely: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;drewdevault.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;19&#x2F;Reforming-the-free-software-message.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;drewdevault.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;19&#x2F;Reforming-the-free-softwa...</a>

just curious: what would be the answer from FSF&#x2F;OSS people to , cheating and opensource games&#x2F;libraries?. i mean if for example dota2 were open source it would be fairly trivial to make scripts to send commands on events (even closed source games get cheat mods!).<p>off topic : on the other side, i think is inevitable that at some point in the future players will have AI assistants looking at their screens , making decisions and inputs just like a real human, (heck! you can sort of do that now with linux&#x2F;x11 , screen grab and proton very easily), i personally would love to see competitive gaming involving AI agents and assistance.

I&#x27;m tired of &quot;source-available&quot; or open-source but unorthodox licence software being mocked. Things like SQLite (which has a clause about Christianity and its moral values) or licences which prohibit specific sectors or use-cases like surveillance or dual-use technologies.<p>I suspect the reason behind that is lobbying by large companies who can&#x27;t use software like that, so they push complete open source without restrictions so they can benefit from it.

Everything Old is New again. Seems like a throw back to early lofty ideals of open source.

sorry, bad title in the USA. I think the word FREE gives more ammunition to critics than assists for advocates. LIBRE is an alternate word

Alternatively, to give people maximum freedom, write public-domain software

&gt; ... the freedom to use, study, improve, and share your software.<p>Does this mean that the software released under an OSI license with the Commons Clause attached [1] is considered &quot;free&quot; by their definition? Because CC allows all of the above, but prohibits commercialization.<p>If not, then perhaps they should elaborate on that aspect.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;commonsclause.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;commonsclause.com</a>

The lack of very obvious attribution or association in the website copy from @sircmpwn is a little odd. The very-subtle-is-it-even-clickable circle top-right is the only indicator.<p>Otherwise this looks pretty good (though my first impression was &quot;who is this? why should I read it?&quot; so it took me a while to get into it) - I&#x27;ll definitely be sending it to people; it&#x27;s clean, tidy &amp; straightforward.<p>One nit-pick: the term &quot;free software&quot; is often understood to be narrowly defined (copyleft), so including permissive licences is tricky, though they&#x27;re at least described AFTER the copyleft section, which is nice.<p>Although... is MPL copyleft???