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In my place of work we are required to run every licence, including licences for "free" software, past Legal. They are pretty good at understanding the ramifications of the.various licences. A licence is a form of contract, and contracts are their break, butter, and jam.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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yet the issue remains, and I admit going on a rabbit trail from the original post. The tertiary issues are incredible - and I'm talking from an engineering perspective. The licensing and legal issues are trivial. Honestly, there is so much incest with gnu/free/etc code and private party that the horse left the barn a long long time ago.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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charlieg wrote: Honestly, there is so much incest with gnu/free/etc code and private party that the horse left the barn a long long time ago.
There, I agree. When I started work at my current employer, we were not allowed to use any free/open source/public domain code. They only allowed us to use such code after a thorough review of the ramifications, and subject to review by Legal.
EDIT: fixed typo
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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charlieg wrote: Further, I seriously doubt most corporate lawyers have a clue as to the technology implications of what they are looking at.
Interesting idea. I worked at a company where the lawyer would have understood it because he did the contracts for the company which wrote code on contract. But there there was no policy on code use by developers. (Back then it was less generally available but it was getting there.)
As far as I can recall I have never seen any policy about it. And I have worked for a number of companies from day zero start ups to those with thousands of employees. At least several places I was the one that insisted on tracking the licenses.
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I think that someone has not actually looked up to see what the license actually is.
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The bit I quoted?
I want to understand everyone's thoughts here, and if I'm misinterpreting something please clarify it here.
This is solely about the ethics of requiring freedom in the use of software. I've spent 25 years working to spread software as far and wide as possible. The issue is very, very close to the heart for me.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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AI changes everything. We don't even know where this is going.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Chris Maunder wrote: The bit I quoted?
In response to the following when I hear someone say that.
"When you hear the term "Free code" do you immediately think"
My first thought is that they did not even attempt to determine what the license is.
Certainly I have run into more than a couple of people who thought that just because they found it on the internet it was free. Even back in the day people would also claim that because they found it in a book or in a magazine.
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I was asking the question without reference to a license, but purely as a "what's the first thing you think of when you hear 'free'".
I'll admit it's a pet peeve. I hear "Free and Open Source" as "source you can review, and that doesn't cost a cent". My gut tells me most people think "free" means "no cost", but the OSI has chosen and continues to choose to use the word to mean freedom. It's always felt disingenuous, but I could very well be in the sheltered minority here (but again: I don't feel I am).
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I am serious though.
When I hear that phrase from a fellow developer my expectation is that they have absolutely no idea about licensing. Not that they didn't look it up but do in fact understand it, but rather that they don't understand the concept at all.
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Code I wrote previously for another project.
As a general rule I don't use other people's code.
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C. The code's owner gave it a sock.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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I generally classify "free code" as open source code with one of the more permissive licenses like MIT.
So maybe not no holds barred, but "free for most practical purposes" is more than good enough for me.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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(a), since the license may still impose restrictions.
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c) The code may have unknown bugs which can potentially be harmful. Or also some unknown non-obvious dependencies.
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| b.
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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| b
>64
It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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It sounds like the cost of using it is zero but the devils are in the license.
Unfortunately I can't consult the officialdom at my employer because their ability to understand the license is overwhelmed by their empire-building avarice. As an example, I use Inno Setup for all of the installers for our products, and have been doing so for a long time. About a year ago a wonk in the IT gestapo realized I was doing so and had not acquired IT approval for it. Hands were wrung and meetings were held (I wasn't invited). They insisted I stop using Inno Setup until they could negotiate a corporate license for it. I told them it had been in use in our products for years. I was going to continue using it and they could take their "vetting process", fold it until it was all sharp corners, and shove it up their legal pad.
They went away and I got back to work.
Edit: I read more of the thread. You mean 'free' as in 'freedom'. I'm of two minds here. If the software is made publicly available and is free for use, that's one thing. Source code is another. If you choose to make source publicly available that's your decision. If you choose not to, that's okay too. I have made my living writing software that is protected art, no different from electronic designs, mechanical drawings, and the like. I find Richard Stallman's notion that you must make your source code available to everyone utterly repugnant, as it devalues the work I do and the investment my employer makes in me doing it.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Doesn't cost money. But then again, I'm frugal by nature.
Bond
Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
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I think I have never quite understood how free beer applies to this.
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I hear both a and b.
But also c.
c means: The code is probably almost untested, unsecure and unsupported.
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Choice b
But I do agree with others, if you use it commercially, you need a lawyer to parse the license with you.
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I usually think that this is something that will take me more time to ensure that it works correctly, reformat it to be readable, shoehorn into my existing project, make it work with my compiler and operating system (hint: not Linux), etc. that I am far better off not touching it. If for some reason, I have lost my sanity, then I would examine the license -- usually to find that I can't use it anyway (since nobody has every paid me to work any anything non-proprietary).
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In my mind, I hear it as a chant at a protest to release the code for all to use.
FREE CODE!
FREE CODE!
Sorry, not what you were asking. It’s not A or B, it’s A and B.
Though I’d probably never use it as-is, because it’d not ‘fit’ my app without some massaging.
Time is the differentiation of eternity devised by man to measure the passage of human events.
- Manly P. Hall
Mark
Just another cog in the wheel
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