this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Privacy
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No cause they want to be able to prevent people from adding ads and tracking to the app and then redistributing it.
He talks about this in the announcement video.
I saw the video. Is that really against the FOSS philosophy? I imagine that you can't do that with e.g. the kernel either.
The licencing they chose is a bit of a hack job, but I see the necessity. IMHO, it's clear that they want to advance the libre software world.
It's not Libre software. It's source available, which is great for a commercial product, allowing people to compile it themselves, but the license is revocable at any time.
It's not contributing to the open source ecosystem, so it's not part of the libre environment.
It's a good thing, I'm glad it exists, and I'm excited to see it spur libre development in the same vein. But it is not open source as the term is commonly used.
I will never forget whoever decided it would be a good idea to conflate "FOSS" and "open-source" to mean the same fucking thing, and to have to refer to software that has open source code "source available". I see this exact fucking discussion going on at the very minimum once a week...
Edit: I know it's a common misconception. My point is that it's a misconception because of the term choice. There's a reason we have to explain it over and over and over again.
The person who invented the term "open source" simply intended it to be "free software" but in business speak. The fact some random people on the internet thought it means "source available" is not the term's fault.
Who was it?
I thought it was companies just using marketing spin to look better than they were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition
Common misconception. "Free as in freedom, not as in beer" had to be explained to many people.
The difference with Linux kernel is that it's way more complicated to persuade someone who just likes the idea of it to install it, so there's really no protection needed - if you're installing a custom kernel (or more likely, a whole OS using that kernel) you probably know enough not to end up downloading malware.
That's not so true about just providing "random" APKs.
no need for a restrictive license! people can just take an apk and slap ads or malware on top. they do it all the time with fake candy crush apks. So I'm pretty sure they won't care about this license.
I think that in the license is just a excuse so no one is redistributing the app and they can make money from it.
I don't claim to know what their true intentions are. But if you want your APK with additional malware removed from any appstore, it for sure helps to have terms which don't allow ppl to do so.
There is nothing wrong about wanting to earn money, but their approach is the weakest. I did not even see a dialogue asking me for money yet.
A higher skill level demand shouldn't change the licencing concepts behind a project.