• airglow@lemmy.world
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      17 minutes ago

      If you are referring to licenses that prohibit commercial use or prevent certain types of users from using the software, those licenses are not open source because they “discriminate against any person or group of persons” or “restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor”.

      For example, if a developer offers their software in a source-available “community” version that is restricted to non-commercial use and a proprietary “enterprise” version, neither the community version nor the enterprise version is open source. On the other hand, if a developer uses an open core licensing model by offering an open source “community” version and a proprietary “enterprise” version, the community version is open source while the enterprise version is not.

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      No, because that would no longer be open in the open source sense.

      It’s either open for everyone, or it isn’t open.

      Edit: sorry to whoever doesn’t like it, but it’s literally how “open source” is defined

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
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        4 hours ago

        No, software being free as in beer is not a necessary condition for being open-source. And if the code is not free as in beer, the pricing model can be whatever the hell you want, as long as the code is shared when the user is licensed. That can mean an expensive license for enterprise use coexisting with a free license for (say) researchers and individual devs.

        • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          No, not in the way GP wrote. You’re not allowed to have your license discriminate between users, so you’d have to sell your software to everyone, not just big companies.

          Either no one pays, or everyone pays.

          • airglow@lemmy.world
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            59 minutes ago

            Open source software can be sold at different prices to different customers, and still remain open source. Open source software can also be sold only to certain types of customers, and still remain open source. Who the developer decides to sell or distribute the software to, and at what price, is unrelated to how the software is licensed.

            However, because the Open Source Definition prohibits open source software licenses from discriminating against “any person or group of persons”, the customers who buy open source software cannot be restricted from reselling or redistributing the software to any other individual or organization.

            • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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              54 minutes ago

              Right, which means that you practically cannot give open source software for free to non-corporations while selling it to corporations while still being fully open source, as the corporations can simply get it for free from any non-corporation.

      • Balder@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        And that’s literally what the article says lol I don’t know why you were downvoted.

        Emily Omier, a well-regarded open-source start-up consultant, emphasized that open source is a binary standard set by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), not a spectrum. "Either you’re open source, or you are not.

        • futatorius@lemm.ee
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          4 hours ago

          The binary mentioned is different. Omier was saying either you share all the source code, or it’s not open-source. You don’t get to retain some proprietary blob for an essential component and still say the whole app is open-source. Pricing is an entirely different question.