Free and Open Source Software

Personal opinion, but the license is fine, and this is a sensationalist headline. The author's claims are not proven correct, and they even write:

The second point is weird. I am not certain, but this too could be considered discrimination...

They are not certain because they are incorrect.

As it stands, it sounds like a variant of GPL which they're using to make sure they don't get sued if it's used maliciously, along with ~~ensuring companies don't try to profit on what they give away~~ (read comment below for better details).

I'm open to changing my mind, but it would need to be changed.

It prevents commercial distribution of the program, and thus it discriminates against persons and groups who wish to distribute the program commercially.

Uhhhh what? That's not how any of that works.

"No discrimination against persons or groups" is about protected classes.

Interpreting it to mean "anyone for any reason" would mean that open source allows people to simply assert sole ownership of it, because to not allow them to is to discriminate against people who want to assert sole ownership. That's an ad absurdum broadening of the OSI ethos.

Edit: a helpful commenter has found where on OSI's website it does prohibit non-commercial-use clauses...

...and the blog author was in fact incorrect in their assertion that it violates the personal discrimination clause (clause 5). It is a violation of Clause 6, “No Discrimination Against Field of Endeavor.” Also, the section specifically talks about prohibiting its use by a business, which is not the same as its sale by a business.

Let's say Alice develops an application with maintainer lock-in, but for whatever reason the need for a fork arises. Bob has been studying the code and knows how to maintain in properly. However, because Alice's code has a non-commercial redistribution clause Bob cannot make money off his maintainership. If the software is sufficiently complex that Bob has to spend a lot of time on it, or if Bob must be able to provide paid support (e.g. for regulatory reasons) he is not allowed to do so. Only Alice can demand financial compensation and thus in practice she is the only one who can afford to maintain the code.

Oh no. This person literally IS trying to just be able to start charging money for someone else's code.

One can certainly argue it's not "open source" so much as "source available", but I don't think it's that controversial.

They're providing a product, and obviously don't want other people slapping their name on it and selling what they worked hard to make. Their license makes it easier for them to enforce that.

They also obviously don't want people creating malicious forks of their program, like what keeps happening with NewPipe. So their license also makes it easier for them to enforce that.

If you want to encourage more companies to make their source code available, then maybe we shouldn't shit on those that are.

Plus, per Rossman's own words, you don't even have to buy Grayjay for it to work, it'll just ask you, ala Winrar. Give them a break.

I don't agree with the assessment of the OP or the original blog article. Grayjay is Open Source software.

It is, however, NOT FREE SOFTWARE and I do know that organizations like the FSF and OSI do not consider it to be free.

The free status of this software was never misrepresented by Louis Rossman. He blatantly explains that there is a cost to this software and that the license is how he plans to enforce his means of collecting this fee on the honor system.

He also outlines how he cannot; and will not...stop anyone from forking this software and basically removing the payment bits of the code and just redistributing it under a different name. I strongly recommend someone does that...and maybe license that work under a much more unrestrictive free license that FLOSS-Only users might find more palatable.

I get that nobody wants or needs to trust Louis to keep his word. He's gotta run a business at some point...and distributing this software this way on the honor system might not pan out quite the same way he hopes it will. I do hope that at the point where he and his compatriots choose to stop maintaining the application; that they do immediately retcon this restrictive license; and re-release it under a new, free, and unrestrictive Open Source Software license.

Let's not make this sound worse than it is. We don't need to devolve into Stallman everytime we see software that's not 100% in agreement with the GPL or other extreme licenses. Let's celebrate some great software, nitpicking like this is not productive. Their license is perfect for their product; at the very least they're HONEST unlike big tech companies. I'd rather have "source available" code than proprietary bullshit that can only be understood by spending months looking at it with ghidra

Open source is not a very useful term. Grayjay isn't free and libre software because it restricts commercial use, and it is definitely source available software. Whether that makes it open source depends on who you ask, and no, OSI is not the undisputed arbiter of all things open source just because they say so.

Griping because someone is using a different definition of open source than you do when they are being very clear about what exactly their license allows is not productive.

You skipped the part about wtf the app is and why we should care.

I thought that open source just meant that you could read the source.

My issue is with the fact that FUTO wishes to have exclusive rights to monetise Grayjay. The public should have the right to vote with their wallets on who they want to maintain their software. If someone else can do a better job than FUTO, why should he not get paid? Yes, FUTO are the ones who spent money upfront to develop Grayjay in the first place, but they are also the ones from whom people will be buying at first. No one is going to pay Bob instead just because he changed the icon. But if FUTO were to drop the ball at some point in the future and Bob were to pick it up, why should Bob not be able to get paid?

Because there are companies who would to pay no dev costs, slap their branding on something, and monetize it, but who will also use their market clout (or walled garden control) to not provide a better product, but just make buying it from the actual developers less convenient, or limit interoperability with the original product.

We do not live in a world of conscientious consumers who will go out of their way to pay the developers who actually made something, we live in a world where whoever's version is at the top of the app store gets the most downloads.

No one is going to pay Bob instead just because he changed the icon.

This is just ridiculously naive. When Bob is actually named 'Amazon', 'Microsoft', 'Google', etc, people will trust them more than random app developer company.

I personally nerver really understood the whole semantics debate that always unfolds in situations like this. What does it matter if a piece of software is truly libre or how it is licensed as long as the source code is available? Respecting a license is a choice. If you have the code you can fork it. Whether it's libre or not only influences your ability to put your real name under the fork, doesn't it?

I'm getting brain damage from this thread. So many stupid people here.

Ecosystem - the blog author doesn't mention that to be open source, you need to be part of the ecosystem that other developers can build upon. Without the ecosystem the internet and our lives would be very different today.

The developer can yank the software from under you, he can change the monetisation model, or he can drop support for the software. With Free or Open Source software you could just take over the responsibility of maintainership or outsource it some other developer you can trust instead.

Sure, good point but in the real world this will never happen.

If Mozilla suddenly decides to implode you won't just casually take over Firefox or hire another maintainer to develop it for you.

In theory this sounds nice but for any software that is of any real complexity (and thus use) it is pretty much irrelevant.

It's non-free, it's non-libre, but it does pass the bar of open source software. The OSI, EFF, RMS or whoever don't have to say it is in order for it to be true.

You can distribute it but there are limitations on it, you can make a fork of Grayjay that is free to use, review, re-distribute and add parts to it adhering to other open source licenses from whence they were developed as long as it's non-commercial, and doesn't make any representations on behalf of FUTO or Rossman, essentially.