this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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Programming
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Does that actually matter?
I'm asking because license stuff is over my head, but I'd like to learn about it more.
They basically want free labor.
That's the oss model.
Not necessarily. While of course in many many cases, open source is a volunteer effort, there's usually some implicit transaction going on. Whether that's improving the software for yourself and passing that on to others, being a business and improving a library or something you use that helps your project generate revenue, or even a straight up commercial transaction.
But in all these cases, the open source project can be taken by you (or others) and you can do whatever you want with it. In the case of Winamp here, you cannot do any of that. It would be different if they were paying for contributions. But they're not, so.
Yeah. You're talking about 0.0001% of the users though. For everyone else it's "I don't want to pay for this".
If you only care about contributing improvements, no, it doesn't matter.
If you want to at least be recognized as an author, and be able to say "I made this", the license opposes that.
I don't know how they intend to accept contributions though. I guess code blocks in tickets or patch files? Forking is not allowed, so the typical fork + branch + create a pull request does not work.
Also, this isn't even compatible with copyright law in some countries. I.e here you can't give up authorship at all; you can only grant an irrevocable, perpetual license (that might even prohibit you from distribution yourself and such) but you'll always be able to say "I made this" no matter what their license says.
The way I look at it is this: I want credit for the work I do, I should also be able to fork a repo that I work on, and I sure as hell don’t like giving up my rights if I can help it.
But others may feel different.