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Mar 30, 2021

it’s kind of amazing how the FSF trying to slip Stallman back into their ranks on the down low has caused the entire internet to notice we don’t actually need the FSF for anything for a good twenty years now

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Maybe open source is all we need after all - it's basically the same as free software but without the restrictions and the convoluted logic to explain why it's somehow "more free". The world has changed so much in the last 20 years, including the relevance of "free software"

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my gripe with free software is that it doesn't go nearly far enough and what it does it does ineffectively i happen to release my work as 0BSD not because i believe in the specific brand of "open source" as defined by OSI but because i consider copyright regressive

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It's also nice to explicitly address software patents which is one of the nice things about Apache 2. apache.org/licenses/LICEN See the "Grant of Patent License" section. It's also nice that it explicitly covers contributions, trademarks and goes into more detail on liability.

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There's an implicit assumption by nearly every open source project that the contributions are being made under the license of the project. It's a good idea to have this explicitly written down. Similarly, it's a good idea to explicitly cover the expectations for trademarks.

7:59 PM · Mar 31, 2021Twitter Web App

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I would prefer not having copyright or patent law, but since we do have them, I'm increasingly fond of Apache 2 as a way of mitigating their harm. There's a reason it has become the preferred license for companies with solid legal teams. It covers a lot of what they want stated.

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Trademarks are important for dealing with scammers, impersonation, etc. I think that makes more sense than the way copyright and patent laws work. You have common law trademarks even if you don't register them but you gradually lose your ability to enforce it if you ignore it.

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Yeah, I realized this way too late and have a "Conbtributing" section that explicitly defines this. It's also why Google has a CLA to avoid implicit assumptions not covering them in court.