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This Guy Has Built an Open Source Search Engine as an Alternative to Google in His Spare Time (www.404media.co)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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"I found it very weird that there essentially is no way to browse the web in an open manner. So that's what I am trying to build," the founder of Stract said.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 9 months ago (2 children)

So have many others, except they didn't start a company based on it. As soon as it is part of a company, it is no longer free and open

[–] [email protected] 60 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

https://opensource.org/osd/

Paradoxically (or not), restrictions on selling software is a fundamental violation of freedom. When the OSS movement says free, it means freedom as in free to do what you want, not free as in free beer. Of course, that freedom also includes the freedom to give it away.

So in practice, that usually results in exactly what you lament: free software with a business model on top to support its development and pay programmers so they can eat.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago

Why? It depends on the business model, even RMS says it's ok to make money with open source