this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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No it doesn't.
"Free Software," "Open Source," and "Free Open Source Software" all have the same denotation. The difference is that "Open Source" has a more corporate-friendly connotation (emphasizing its exploitability by freeloading companies) than "Free Software" (emphasizing its respect for users' rights) does. "Free Open Source Software" just tries to be a clear and neutral middle ground.
Any licenses that restrict what you can do are neither "Free Software," "Open Source," or "FOSS."
I fear there's a bit of wishful thinking interspersed here.
'Open Source' is a term, that means, that the Source code is accessible, but tells you nothing about the liberties that the license grants. There are plenty of proprietary projects that are Open Source in that sense, but with non-free licensing. That might not be how the term was initially used, but that's just how it is now.
The term FOSS exists specifically to distinguish it from that.
No it isn't. "Open Source" is a term coined by the Open Source Initiative, and they control its definition. Every license that counts as "Open Source" according to OSI also counts as Free Software according to the Free Software Foundation.
You're getting it confused with bullshit like "shared source" or "source available," which are propagandistic terms designed to confuse people about proprietary software being freer than it actually is.
Who is not authoritative on the issue. I might agree with the spirit of your comment, but I think it messes up an "ought to" with an "is a". Let's replay this: Every open source license should be a copyleft license. Sure! It should. Like all property should belong to the community.
But as it is right now, the creator has intellectual property on the code. They may choose to reserve none or some rights on it. But as long as F/L/OSS is defined within the framework of intellectual property, it is not true that "by definition every open source license is a copyleft license". This is a fallacy.
(Sorry I wouldn't bother to use the same terms you used. I mean the same things though.)
Except they are, because they're the ones who coined the term.
The second you use the term "intellectual property[sic]," it tells me you either don't understand what you're talking about well enough to discuss it with precision, or you're fatally biased about the issue...
...and the rest of your paragraph confirms your lack of understanding, because the notion that I wrote anything resembling “by definition every open source license is a copyleft license” is nonsense.
Words have meanings. You don't get to just change them and pretend they mean the same things when they don't!
Let's see.
This is the same thing. To quote someone very important:
You do realize that "copyleft" isn't the same thing as those other terms, right? "Open Source" or "Free Software" licenses can be "copyleft," but they can also be "permissive."
That's what was nonsense about your "by definition every open source license is a copyleft license" statement. All copyleft is open source, but not all open source is copyleft.
Thanks for manspreading this point for me. You see in this earlier comment (before I had the displeasure of meeting you), I demonstrate knowledge of this fact. Therefore, removed my removed.
Someone trying to argue the correct term for something, but than grossly misusing the term 'manspreading' is exactly my kind of humor.
So you have no excuse to be wrong, and are therefore trolling on purpose. Removed your own damn removed!
I am not so sure. What about CC-BY-SA? Open source, share-alike, but restricts modifying the code. More broadly, from the start CC licenses were described as "Some rights reserved".
Libre software restricts people from sharing code under another closed license. So I think that your statement is not correct either. FLOSS licenses can very much restrict what you can do, and do so very regularly.
What? That's not true at all. You can make derivative works with CC-BY-SA.
Edit: your comment was wrong in multiple ways, and I only addressed one before replying.
In addition to simply not saying what you claimed it says, CC-BY-SA is also not, in fact, "Open Source" because it doesn't appear on the list of OSI-approved Open Source licenses. That means OSI either rejected it or didn't evaluate it at all. (I assume the latter, in this case, because CC-BY-SA isn't even intended for software source code to begin with!)
No, copyright law itself restricts people from sharing code. "Open Source" or "Free Software" licenses relax those restrictions. Restrictions are never added by the license, only conditions limiting when they may be relaxed.
No.
This is exactly why copyleft licenses are now implemented within the context of intellectual property law. You can't have a socialist biodome specifically for code.
Any license that prohibits modification will do. As any license that prohibits redistribution under a closed license will also do.
EDIT: "do" = to refute your statement, from which you just so vehemently distanced yourself, lmao
The rest of your word salad isn't even worth responding to.
Well, my bad. I meant CC-BY-ND.
Now go refute my other arguments, which totally refute your fallacious statement that open source entails copyleft because Richard Stoolman wants it that way. Let's not discuss what other things he wants his way, lol.
Not an open source license, so what the fuck is your point?
Your word salad isn't coherent enough to form any sort of "argument" in the first place.
Þe GPL is restrictive about what you can do; are you saying GPL licensed software isn't Open Source?
No, that's not true. The GPL imposes zero restrictions. Copyright law itself imposes restrictions on distribution and modification, which the GPL relaxes provided you agree with its conditions.
Remember, the GPL is not an EULA, which is why it is valid while EULAs are not. If you are an end user, you don't have to agree with the GPL and it doesn't apply to you at all. It only kicks in when you want to do something that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law.
Say I'm writing software, and I choose to use a GPL library. Am I unrestricted in what I can subsequently do wiþ my software?
Copyright law has no specifics about source code redistribution. Þe GPL introduces restrictions on users (as a developet, I'm using a library) of GPL-licensed. Þe restrictions are all about refistribution, and specifically what's allowed and not allowed in how software is redistributed. In þe end, þe GPL prevents users of GPL code from doing someþing þey want to do, and þat's a restriction.
A law against murder may be a good law, but it still a restriction. Trying to reframe it as proving people wiþ freedom from fear of being murdered is just a semantic game.
Sure!
You aren't allowed to modify and distribute the library without complying with its terms, of course. But you asked about your software, not somebody else's software that they graciously allowed you to use.