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What is the meaning of close source? (lemy.lol)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by DenizEfeDEX@lemy.lol to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I mean can't someone steal code from the devices file manager? or create his own fork?(Sorry for bad English)

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[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

In addition to what others said about the availability of the source code itself, there's a whole legal framework around it.

A company could have code where the source is publicly available, but they still could say that you are not allowed to copy, fork, sell/distribute it. In that case, there wouldn't physically be anything preventing you from doing it, which sounds strange, until you think about how that's the exactly how it works for books, music, movies, etc.

There's also an in-between for software that's not publicly open source, but is open source to users. A company could sell you their software, and deliver it to you as open source code.