140
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
140 points (97.3% liked)
Open Source
39440 readers
899 users here now
All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!
Useful Links
- Open Source Initiative
- Free Software Foundation
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Software Freedom Conservancy
- It's FOSS
- Android FOSS Apps Megathread
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
- !libre_culture@lemmy.ml
- !libre_software@lemmy.ml
- !libre_hardware@lemmy.ml
- !linux@lemmy.ml
- !technology@lemmy.ml
Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Personally I make a distinction between open source and free (as in freedom) software. Free software is open source but open source software isn't necessarily free.
I can check and validate the open source software that these fremium devs provide but it isn't free. The premium part they offer is neither open source nor free.
This is contrary to OSS definitions. Personally, I'm not a fan of the strict position OSS takes with things like SSPLv1, but I'm the vocal minority.
Free software and open source are the same thing in the accepted definition. A good example of where this is tough is something like MongoDB, where it's free to run and source available, but the license doesn't allow you to resale it as a service. This was done to stop companies like Azure and AWS from making millions without supporting development, while not restricting most business use.
By OSS standards, Mongo is not free, and is not open source.
Yes, that's why I added 'personally'.