Hi, I am currently working on a website I plan to release under the GPL3 license. I was wondering what copyright notice I should put in the footer of the web page. The notice I currently have is “Copyright 2023 <myname>”, but I do not know if this conflicts with the GPL licence. Should I change it to something like “Copyright 2023 <projectname> contributers”?
There is one definition of free in FLOSS. The FSF definition.
There is also only a finite set of English words for the concept & it seems silly that that one entity would get the final say one what one true Scotsman is. Even the average layman thinks “free software” only applies to gratis. Words can have multiple meanings, but what would you propose software in licensed as free-but-anti-capitalist be called without invoking a long hyphenated adjective?
In software ecosystem indeed there is an issue about the word “free” which can mean “free of charge” or “libre”, that is the reason why the term FOSS should be replaced by FLOSS.
In this very software world, the OSI defined “open source” by 10 conditions. The FSF defined also since eons the term “free / libre” by 4 liberties. These two things are the base of trust and understanding for every one.
For several years capitalist companies try to redefine these words because cannot bear to see that communities dislike or hate how they change the licences of their products (e.g. Elastic with BSL, Mongo with SSPL, Terraform with BSL too). They try to get excuse and fake reasons to be allowed to change the definitions but they are not legit at all.
About your example for a “free and anticapitalist” license, it cannot by “free” because one of the four liberties of the “free” definition is not filled.
However this is an interesting point because there is a new family of licences which appeared several years ago: the ethical licenses brought by the Organisation for Ethical Source (https://ethicalsource.dev/) which define the term « ethical source » by 7 principles. You can get more details about the anti-capitalist license here: https://anticapitalist.software/).
In few words, we must keep the OSI, FSF and OES definitions for open source, free and ethical source words because there are meanings, history, facts and fights behind. If they are disturbing for people or if people disagree, they have to create something else. Not change the definition for pure rebranding.
Well put.
I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with what OSI & FSF are putting forth nor would I discount all of the importance of the past & the trail they have blazed to get these ideas in the software zeitgeist—but I will say is there should be room in the discussion for supporting these alternative ideologies on what “free” and “the commons” should be. You can choose words like “ethical” and that might be applicable, but as a result, consider your perception of a software now being tagged “nonfree”—I know I get a bad feeling about that personally.
Copyfair & copyfarleft licenses offer an alternative interpretation that I think a lot of folks agree with on priciple—such as megacorp with its massive profits gained by using our software should be contributing back in maintenance, documentation, marketing, or cold cash for financial compensation (e.g. not agree without exception to FSF’s freedoms)—because a work wasn’t created with those entities in mind. Where this gets tho most messy however is taking such stances (obviously) makes one’s project incompatible with the large body of existing work, but also shaming of folks interested in choosing those software licenses or even going CC *-NC on creative works due to compatibility with strict OSI/FSF definitions.
Speaking of the “nonfree” thing,
nixpkgsas things labeled only under those terms while these other banners such as “ethical” are missing. Perhaps I should take a look at what it would take to cover those licenses too as you’re almost meant to feel guilty for using “nonfree” software which requires environment variables/config flag & for, at a high level, trying to accomplish a similiar goal of allowing users to share their source with the commons.