Problems with free software and open source models: Difference between revisions

1. ''issue'' - "'''No restrictions on field of use'''" means that software is explicitly licensed for military purposes, spying purposes, selling environmentally and socially destructive products, hiding activities of companies, and anything else that opponents of [[moral purchasing]] may want to do.  There is no legal recourse.  While there are few incentives to subvert operating system or database software, there are ''many'' incentives to subvert or gain advantage in the operations of a [[healthy buying infrastructure]].  With no way to restrict these activities with civil court action, only technical means are available to subvert such subversion - wasting everyone's time in an [[arms race]] that is to no one's advantage.

2. ''issue'' - No party with power to sue.  Under [[GPL]] and other free software licenses, "the community" is assumed to exist and have some powers of persuasion, but they have no practical powers to actually force the license terms to be met.  What rights they have are not enforceable since they lack a [[self-funding]] model that would reward enforcers or even require cooperation from contributors whose work is appropriated.  For example, most GPL abusers simply thumb their noses at the FSF, knowing they cannot possibly be sued given limits on FSF resources.  They could settle out of court for less than theya re making from violating the license anyway, in the worst case, or agree to simply work around or re-engineer the software.  By contrast:  Consortium and private licenses, and some open source licenses like the [[BSD]], specify exactly who can and must act to protect license integrity.  And some like [[Java]] have proven successful even at shutting down [[Microsoft]]'s attempted license abuse.