It's a higher level of consciousness to take into account the consequences of your acts and of your work.
Commercial developers just go as far as the money paid by their customers, and don't care what their software is used for.
Some commercial developers restrict some use of their software (but more for their own protection, because they know the limits of the "quality" of their products, than for moral reasons). For example, you're not allowed to use Apple software to develop nuclear power systems.
C. Except as and only to the extent permitted in this License and by applicable law, you may not copy, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, modify, or create derivative works of the Apple Software or any part thereof. THE APPLE SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS, LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES OR OTHER EQUIPMENT IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE APPLE SOFTWARE COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.
In addition, corporations under USA jurisdiction must restrict the use of their products to authorised countries only.
If a country feels threatened by another country, it's understandable that it wish to avoid providing this other country with any help that would heighten the thread.
Similarly, if an individual feels threatened by another country or by other individuals, it's understandabel that we wish to avoid providing them with any help, most notably when it's in the form of gratis software.
Of course, this contradicts the ideal of free(dom) software.
But we have to take into account the circumstances, we don't live in an ideal world.
You have also to take into account the fact that you cannot in general control the application of your free software license. Those using BSD or MIT and similar license basically abandon all control on their software use and distribution (or non-distribution).
In the case of GPL, the copyright owner keeps control of the distribution if his software, under the terms of the license (which mandates the derived works authors to distribute the sources along with their derived works).
But in practice, GPL software owners don't have the means to control what corporations in the USA do with their software and whether they respect the terms of the license or not, and even if they detected license violations, they don't have the power to do anything about it. We're counting here more on the self discipline of the potential users of the software than on anything else, and this means that it can be abused easily.
Therefore beyond the restrictions the license may put on the use or users of the software, the questions of the distribution of free(dom) software itself must be considered, in each case.
It's probably better to distribute widely and indiscriminately software whose success is based on network effect. For example, things like GNU or Linux.
But for more specific software, one should ponder whether even its users wouldn't be better served by a more restricted distribution.
In practice, we know that most open source software is not read by a lot of people, and not used by a lot more either anyways.
Distributing the sources of the software you sell to your customers or give to your friend still seems to be a very important act of software freedom. Distributing it to the whole wide world, doesn't seem so important. The GPL itself clearly distringuishes this point: you can use, read and modify a GPL software, keeping your derived work entirely private, as long as you don't distribute it. This covers use of derived work inside some artificial boundaries (one would have to revise the legal definition of &...
Even more bizarre - http://www.treefinder.de/downloads.html - the author seems incredibly butthurt that he hasn't been made rich off this piece of software (at least, that's the vibe I'm getting)
There is definitely a certain frustration on the author's side (justified or not, I can't tell), but I wouldn't necessarily attribute that to him not having been made rich by his software in particular.
1- his software is not free(dom) software, it's not open source; it is apparently closed-source "freeware".
2- there's the mention of commercial or military use licenses could be obtainable by contacting him directly.
One could argue that this is a defective marketing approach, and that to earn money selling software, you have to actively approach prospects and convince them they need your software.
The statistics on the number of users of most free(dom) software distributed world wide definitely shows it.
Wow! I guess writing scientific software doesn't prevent you from being a profoundly ignorant twat. Bigotry is an understatement. Have a nice day, Adolf!
If this is bigotry, then what would we call the Russian and Iranian sanctions?
I would suggest researching the definition of the word before using it.
As far as I'm aware the software is free, it's in the developers right to choose who he/she awards his software to.
We see a lot of women-only or ethnic-minority only projects in tech, yet nobody is calling those bigotries.
Having said all this, I don't agree with the developer's world views, however this is like free speech, you have to allow it, wether you like it or not.
8 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 32.1 ms ] threadI think that the licence is perfectly reasonable.
It's a higher level of consciousness to take into account the consequences of your acts and of your work.
Commercial developers just go as far as the money paid by their customers, and don't care what their software is used for.
Some commercial developers restrict some use of their software (but more for their own protection, because they know the limits of the "quality" of their products, than for moral reasons). For example, you're not allowed to use Apple software to develop nuclear power systems.
cf. https://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/MacOSX.htm
In addition, corporations under USA jurisdiction must restrict the use of their products to authorised countries only.If a country feels threatened by another country, it's understandable that it wish to avoid providing this other country with any help that would heighten the thread.
Similarly, if an individual feels threatened by another country or by other individuals, it's understandabel that we wish to avoid providing them with any help, most notably when it's in the form of gratis software.
Of course, this contradicts the ideal of free(dom) software.
But we have to take into account the circumstances, we don't live in an ideal world.
You have also to take into account the fact that you cannot in general control the application of your free software license. Those using BSD or MIT and similar license basically abandon all control on their software use and distribution (or non-distribution).
In the case of GPL, the copyright owner keeps control of the distribution if his software, under the terms of the license (which mandates the derived works authors to distribute the sources along with their derived works).
But in practice, GPL software owners don't have the means to control what corporations in the USA do with their software and whether they respect the terms of the license or not, and even if they detected license violations, they don't have the power to do anything about it. We're counting here more on the self discipline of the potential users of the software than on anything else, and this means that it can be abused easily.
Therefore beyond the restrictions the license may put on the use or users of the software, the questions of the distribution of free(dom) software itself must be considered, in each case.
It's probably better to distribute widely and indiscriminately software whose success is based on network effect. For example, things like GNU or Linux.
But for more specific software, one should ponder whether even its users wouldn't be better served by a more restricted distribution.
In practice, we know that most open source software is not read by a lot of people, and not used by a lot more either anyways.
Distributing the sources of the software you sell to your customers or give to your friend still seems to be a very important act of software freedom. Distributing it to the whole wide world, doesn't seem so important. The GPL itself clearly distringuishes this point: you can use, read and modify a GPL software, keeping your derived work entirely private, as long as you don't distribute it. This covers use of derived work inside some artificial boundaries (one would have to revise the legal definition of &...
2- there's the mention of commercial or military use licenses could be obtainable by contacting him directly.
One could argue that this is a defective marketing approach, and that to earn money selling software, you have to actively approach prospects and convince them they need your software.
The statistics on the number of users of most free(dom) software distributed world wide definitely shows it.
I would suggest researching the definition of the word before using it.
As far as I'm aware the software is free, it's in the developers right to choose who he/she awards his software to.
We see a lot of women-only or ethnic-minority only projects in tech, yet nobody is calling those bigotries.
Having said all this, I don't agree with the developer's world views, however this is like free speech, you have to allow it, wether you like it or not.