Talk:Open Software License

Making money with free software

Just a few questions...

How does a programmer or user make money from open source software, and if they do who from? I have used programs that claim to be open sourced, such as limewire, but often the reason the software is free is because the original programmers have added adverts obviously to make money.

I understand the ideology of a free internet. I can also understand all the benefits of having adapted programmes that a user has customised himself for his computer, but who really benefits from this OSL and does this mean that adverts and pop-ups and all those nasty things that infect my computer will be a thing of the past, just because people would rather just give their product away?

Any thoughts would greatly be appreciated.

Garry Kiely.

Talk pages are only to be used for discussing improvements to the article, not general chat. That said, you might want to take a look at Category:Free software companies and see their business models. Gronky 10:26, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Improvements

This article should acknowledge that the licence has an AGPL-like effect, in that it deems access over a network to be equivalent to distribution.

The section on 'and any later version' is incorrect - a copyright owner cannot violate a license s/he grants (especially if the licence is not a contractual one). It's probably not a good idea to modify the text of the license itself, but a preamble saying 'this code is licensed under Open Software License version [] and any later version' is fine (assuming the licensor owns all the copyrights - if not, we are in to a standard license compatibility enquiry).

Andrewjskatz (talk) 13:00, 3 February 2014 (UTC) Andrew