- cross-posted to:
- foss@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- foss@beehaw.org
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?
The ability to modify the code is a central tenet of free software. The GPL takes care of making those modifications available to others. That effectively is the payment the original devs get.
My point was that the selling of others’ code is NOT part of the agreement. For that, the volunteers deserve payment. Technically, it’s a violation of the GPL to modify the code, and distribute binaries of it without the source. Companies get away with that all the time.