• @Txopi
    5•2 years ago

    I don’t want to ruin your joke but MIT is both, free and open at the same time.

    MIT licensed software is free/libre software according to GNU and is “open source” according to OSI.

    • CarrotsHaveEars
      19•2 years ago

      Exactly. To the evil company, it’s free. What’s not free is the rebranded software.

        • Arthur BesseA
          5•2 years ago

          Under the MIT license, a derivative work is allowed to be neither free nor libre.

          • @Txopi
            4•2 years ago

            A little clarification about the terminology I use: I use the term “free software” as RMS coined it (“free like in freedom”) and as GNU strictly defines on its website. They are some similar MIT licenses (the most common one is X11). Anyway they are very similar, free and GNU GPL compatible as you can read here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Expat http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#X11License

            MIT licenses and other ones (BSD…) are free but are not “copyleft”. They don’t require all modified and extended versions of the program to be free software as well. Perhaps, that’s what you mean when you say “!= free”!

            Note that all the source code in the public domain is free and not copyleft too so I agree with RMS when he defines copyleft software as a subset of all the existing free software (now and in the future, when all tends to become public domain).

            In fact, GNU distinguishes more kind of slightly different free licenses:

            • Strong copyleft: GPL, AGPL…
            • Weak copyleft: LGPL, WxWidgets…
            • Non copyleft: X11 (“MIT”), FreeBSD…

            Note: free software != GPL compatible. EUPL 1.1 and 1.2 are free software but they are not compatible with GPL. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#EUPL-1.1

            Sorry for this long comment. My English is quite poor so probably some parts are difficult to understand. If someone wants clarifications of this clarifications, just say it and I’ll try again 😅

            • Arthur BesseA
              4•2 years ago

              good explanation, I wouldn’t call your English poor :)

              to put it another way: permissive non-copyleft free software licenses like MIT grant everyone the freedom to create derivative works which can deny other people freedom later, which is why predatory companies start salivating and rubbing their hands like OP’s man in the yellow jacket when they find high quality permissively-licensed code.

    • @federico3
      9•2 years ago

      “Free” as in “unpaid labor” or “free to proprietize my work”