What comes after open source? Bruce Perens is working on it
www.theregister.com
'Our licenses aren't working anymore,' says free software pioneer

TLDR: Companies should be required to pay developers for any open source software they use.

He imagines a simple yearly compliance process that gets companies all the rights they need to use Post-Open software. And they’d fund developers who would be encouraged to write software that’s usable by the common person, as opposed to technical experts.

It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t really see any feasible means to get this to kick off.

What are your thoughts on it?

  • ActualOPEnglish
    1•11 months ago

    In my opinion, the issue is that a cell phone is such a free-software-hostile environment that arguably GPL software shouldn’t “be allowed to” come into contact with it in any capacity if the spirit of the GPL were being upheld.

    How are phones free-software-hostile? I know IOS is, but Android not really. There’s a list of open source Android distributions. Although not very good, they are viable.

    Actually, maybe making it a realistic possibility to drop in a recompiled replacement should be a part of the GPL. I remember people were talking about this decades ago

    It does feel out of place how that isn’t in the GPL.

    • mo_ztt ✅English
      1•11 months ago

      There’s a list of open source Android distributions. Although not very good, they are viable.

      Yeah, I get that. This is why I’m not fully in agreement with Perens that this is an urgent problem.

      How are phones free-software-hostile?

      Because the whole idea of the GPL was to usher in a future that was like the environment RMS grew up in, where you always had the source code to all your stuff and you could examine or modify or build on it. Linux machines are in actual practice that way, which is super cool. Android phones are basically not, from the viewpoint of almost any mortal human. I think the argument is that the efforts that the manufacturers make to close off modifications to the phones, and then put software on them that’s sometimes hostile to the best interests of the phone owner, means they shouldn’t be able to use all this GPL-licensed software for free in order to build the phones they’re selling.