this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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41
Grayjay - Revolutionizing the Way We Consume Videos (technomagnus.vercel.app)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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[โ€“] sir_reginald 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

repackaging is a fundamental software freedom. that's just for starters.

Here I leave a comment I saw here for a more detailed explanation.

Friendly reminder that Grayjay is only source-available.

FUTO Temporary License (FTL) violates the following open-source principles:

  • Open source licenses must allow free redistribution. FTL allows license suspension and termination at any time, without notice, for any or no reason.
  • Open source licenses must allow source code distribution. FTL allows restrictions to access the code at any time, without notice, for any or no reason.
  • Open source licenses must allow modifications. FTL allows modifications only for non-commercial use, or maybe not even that. FTL dodges the word modifications here, no clue.
  • Open source licenses must explicitly allow distribution of software built from modified source code. FTL forbids distribution of software built from modified source code for commercial use.
  • Open source licenses must not discriminate against persons/groups and fields of endeavor. FTL allows license suspension and termination at any time, without notice, for any or no reason.

The FTL enables the following practices:

  • Copyright holders can change the license terms.
  • Copyright holders can re-license everything.
  • Copyright holders can target specific groups and individuals with discriminatory license terms.
  • Copyright holders can close source everything.
  • Copyright holders can forbid specific groups and individuals from using their work.

My main gripe here is that the video sells a source-available software with severe usage restrictions as open-source. These restrictions may sound reasonable to people outside of the open-source world, especially to people who use similar wording in their own terms of service, but nobody would touch your software with a ten foot pole with a software license like that.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

repackaging is a fundamental software freedom

Re-packaging is fine. You just can't sell it.

They're just trying to prevent a company from making money off the free labor of the authors. It's the same issue that has plagued other projects, such as Elastic Search, which ultimately led it to change licenses. And it's why MariaDB created the BSL, which they and other companies have adopted (very similar terms here - source free to use for non-commercial purposes).

If the hangup is specifically that they can change the terms, or revoke rights altogether, the other licenses also allow for that - that's how these projects are changing licenses at all, and it happens quite a bit. I have personally contributed to projects that were GPL, and then went Apache.

As a developer, I could certainly see not wanting to build on the project while the license is what it is, but as a user, I don't think this license is bad. I also think this is likely temporary (hence the name - "FUTO Temporary License"), and the tight grip on the rights are probably just so they can re-license later (hopefully to something a little more permissive). I could definitely be wrong, but given Louis's track record of fighting for things like right-to-repair, I'd give him the benefit of the doubt here. He could certainly prove me wrong though, if they do anything shady. Feel free to rub it in my face if he ever does.

Edit:

Just for proof, here's the specific line that says you can re-package and redistribute, from section 2, line 2:

  1. You may provide the code to anyone else and publish excerpts of it for the purposes of review, compilation and non-commercial distribution, provided that when you do so you make any recipient of the code aware of the terms of this license, they must agree to be bound by the terms of this license and you must attribute the code to the provider.