31
votes
Does license prohibition of illicit / malicious use or modification clash with GPL's freedom to modify?
Simply put, a requirement to seek outside approval in order to make or deploy changes is not GPL-compatible, nor is it even a requirement within the definitions of free and open-source software.
Part ...
- 35.6k
26
votes
Does license prohibition of illicit / malicious use or modification clash with GPL's freedom to modify?
You are approaching this the wrong way.
First, you are assuming any wish to modify the software will be malicious, while in reality people will want to make all kinds of changes you hadn't anticipated ...
- 781
13
votes
Accepted
How to deal with unaddressed bug reports?
Ultimately, if the developers are working on the project as a labor of love, they're going to work on what they want to work on. You can't expect them to prioritize your issue just because you asked ...
- 35.6k
11
votes
Does license prohibition of illicit / malicious use or modification clash with GPL's freedom to modify?
Modifications are still possible, as long as they go through the official channel and are verified to be fully compliant by the community.
This would make the software definitely not open source as ...
- 18.5k
10
votes
Accepted
What's the difference between different membership levels in the Linux Foundation?
(disclosure: I am a supporter and my company is a silver member of the Linux Foundation).
TL;DR: Higher levels of membership pay bigger fees and have more say in the running of the Foundation with ...
- 14.3k
10
votes
How to deal with unaddressed bug reports?
Apsillers' answer is perfect, I will just add a case study about the last paragraph ("Money talks").
My open source project (1.5 million users) has had users pay third-party companies for features. I ...
- 2,584
10
votes
Accepted
Enforceability of codes of conduct for smaller projects
Codes of conduct aren't just about the relationship and interactions between the community members and the maintainer(s), but about the interactions between all community members - e.g., what language ...
- 5,012
10
votes
Does license prohibition of illicit / malicious use or modification clash with GPL's freedom to modify?
If I received GPL licensed software and pass it to someone else, that is copyright infringement unless I follow the GPL license conditions. Telling the receiver they cannot use the software for ...
- 1,265
9
votes
Accepted
What research explains why so many programmers invest time in creating free libraries?
Of course there is no single answer to this question. The motivation can change over time and over individuals but I will try to list a few common reasons.
For ideological reasons
People who invented ...
- 5,557
8
votes
Accepted
How to stop/mitigate damage from abuses of the Collective Code Construction Contract (C4)
Based on what I read the safety is that the process happens in the dev branch not master. Essentially no harm is done as long as someone spots the problem within a reasonable time period:
for i = 1 ...
- 354
8
votes
What's the best way to convince an open source library to change their API?
Submit a patch. (Or multiple patches.) Note in your submission that the patch makes breaking changes, so the maintainer can increment the version number, or whatever signal they use to notify ...
- 1,970
8
votes
Can projects undergo a hostile takeover?
Yes. To do so, you need to fork a project (thereby becoming the BDFL of that new project) and just simply have your fork be more popular than the original project.
It's not really hard at all, ...
- 1,064
8
votes
Accepted
Method for accounting for non-code contributions?
I'm not aware of any hard metrics that can be used to automatically count non-code contributions (and I'm not sure there could be one) but I do know about projects that (1) survey contribution types ...
- 243
8
votes
Does license prohibition of illicit / malicious use or modification clash with GPL's freedom to modify?
Modifying and using the software is not the same thing as connecting to my network.
The GPL and related free software licenses are about the rights to modify and distribute the software, not to ...
- 333
6
votes
Accepted
Did it ever happen that an open source project's leader (BDFL) died? If so, what happened to the project?
My colleague at the Ballistic Research Laboratory, Mike Muuss, leader of the BRLCAD project (also well-known as the author of the "ping" network testing utility), was killed in an automobile accident. ...
- 3,911
6
votes
Accepted
Where to find people interested in contributing to an open source project?
I think the question should be the other way around: How does people interested in Open Source development find you and your projects? My answer would be: be visible and provide easy ways to get ...
- 550
6
votes
Accepted
How do you get someone to use or even contribute to your Open Source project?
The typical project life cycle:
build something that's useful, but buggy
people start using your software because it is useful
people are annoyed because your software is buggy, and is missing ...
- 38.6k
6
votes
Enforceability of codes of conduct for smaller projects
Just picking up on one bit not covered in Mureinik's answer:
If people are most likely going to have an issue with me, and I am also the one that the issue should be reported to I do not think the ...
- 18.5k
5
votes
Can projects undergo a hostile takeover?
I witnessed a hostile takeover of a project once which happened "from within". At that point I was no longer very actively involved, but still had good contact with many project contributors, so I saw ...
- 11.8k
5
votes
Accepted
How to start committing to small opensource Python modules
If your goal is to contribute something back, then I would likely use this approach:
submit a ticket with a feature request or bug
then mention that you intend to work on this and ask for advice
if ...
- 14.3k
5
votes
Are any well-known open-source projects helmed by women?
The Coccinelle project (see also on github) was started by Julia Lawall, and she's still one of the core developers. She's also considered authoritative on what it can and can't do; see eg this from ...
- 47k
5
votes
Accepted
5
votes
Accepted
Open Source Package Name
Is it possible to request a name change?
Sure, you can request almost anything.
If yes, what are the ways to proceed in asking for a name change?
The best is probably to contact one of the project ...
- 18.5k
4
votes
Did it ever happen that an open source project's leader (BDFL) died? If so, what happened to the project?
There have been some projects in the TeX world (e.g. tex4ht, biblatex) where the original author suddenly died or otherwise vanished. The LPPL has a mechanism for taking over maintenance of such ...
- 265
4
votes
Accepted
Why is Docker so popular?
Speaking as someone who doesn't like docker (or containerisation in general) and thinks it gets wildly overused in places it doesn't belong, I also have to say it's very impressive.
chroot jails give ...
- 47k
4
votes
Accepted
Ethical Open Source Protection
That's what the big shouty all-caps warranty disclaimer, that many people seem to dislike, is doing. Here's an example from the MIT license:
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ...
- 8,859
4
votes
Accepted
How can an open-source project share web site ownership?
You've already realised that digital credentials are the easy part of the problem to solve. They can be held by multiple people, each of whom can then perform authoritative activites with them. ...
- 47k
4
votes
Enforceability of codes of conduct for smaller projects
You don't need a code of conduct.
GitHub suggests you add one, but this isn't a requirement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct says:
A code of conduct can be an important part in ...
- 1,866
4
votes
Accepted
How to protect communities from devolving into "open source in name only"?
There is no particularly good solution.
Open Source software needs maintenance, which has costs – at the very least, it will cost time. This is a tragedy of the commons scenario where everyone ...
- 38.6k
3
votes
FLOSS projects : How and where can I start contributing?
Before you start contributing to an open source project make sure doing so is something you want to do and aren't doing because you think you need to.
Andre Arko has three questions you should answer ...
- 31
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible