Professional developer and amateur gardener located near Atlanta, GA in the USA.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I disagree with a few points of that article.

    Another misunderstanding of “open source” is the idea that it means “not using the GNU GPL.” This tends to accompany another misunderstanding that “free software” means “GPL-covered software.” These are both mistaken, since the GNU GPL qualifies as an open source license and most of the open source licenses qualify as free software licenses. There are many free software licenses aside from the GNU GPL.

    You do too by using the term FOSS instead of FLOSS,

    The terms “FLOSS” and “FOSS” are used to be neutral between free software and open source. If neutrality is your goal, “FLOSS” is the better of the two, since it really is neutral. But if you want to stand up for freedom, using a neutral term isn’t the way. Standing up for freedom entails showing people your support for freedom.

    The FSF and OSI agree on many of the licenses they approve as being free/open. If you can tell me of any notable differences that aren’t a matter of one of them not commenting on a particular license yet then I’d be open to change my opinion on it.

    Regardless, even if you believe the OSD and FSF’s definition of libre software differ, merely having the source available is not enough to meet what the OSD defines as open source. Which is what this conversation was originally about.






  • I never got around to using WSL for dev stuff, sadly. I was stuck on Windows 7 until December 2019 and have had a Mac for work ever since. For personal stuff I just use the MSYS environment included in Git for windows (it has bash and a few other things). If I ever got a Windows laptop for work again I’d probably put the time in to learn WSL.