Re: [gentoo-nfp] Social contract and its effect on upstream software choices

[Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike)]

Hi Alec!

I have taken a refresher from reading https://opensource.org/osd and  and https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/philosophy/social-contract.html

The relevant part of the social contract is "However, Gentoo will never depend upon a piece of software or metadata unless it conforms to the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, the Creative Commons - Attribution/Share Alike or some other license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI)."



El 1/5/20 a las 8:11, Alec Warner escribió:
> Hi,
>
> Consider a case where we have a piece of software and its open source. The open source software has various plugins, some of which look useful and we may wish to deploy them for Gentoo. However, we must consider the social contract, hence this discussion.
>
> Can we use the plugins if:
>  (1) They are closed source (e.g. upstream provides binaries only with a restricted non-free license.)


This is likely against the social contract. Specially if the Gentoo project in anyways needs such plugin for operating normally.


>  (2) They are free software (e.g. FSF / OSI approved license) but they cost money.

This is fine AS LONG AS ADDITIONAL LICENSE TERMS ARE NOT ADDED. Software doesn't have to be free as in free beer to be free as in freedom.


>    (b) A subset, its free software and it costs money but it is free for open source communities to use.


If such subset is still FSF/OSI approved and additional license terms are not added, this should be fine too.


>  (3) They are open source, but not free (e.g. they have some kind of open license but are not FSF / OSI approved.)


If we follow the letter of the social contract this is clearly not okay. If we follow the spirit though this is probably okay. In the last case, the trustees and/or council should decide if a license fulfills the expectation in a case by case basis.

A clear example of such a license is the WTFPL. The license is overly permissive, it fulfills all of OSI requirements but is not OSI approved. Yet I doubt anybody would say that using such software is not okay.


>  (4) They are open source (and free), but we have chosen to use the built plugins (rather than building from source) for the sake of time and convenience.


As long as you can have access to the source code and modify, redistribute, and compile it, this is fine (unless in the building process the plugin is combined with proprietary software).