Puts Chief Tightwad Officers on notice

Drivers passing through San Francisco have a new roadside distraction to consider: billboards calling out businesses that don’t cough up for the open source code that they use.

The signs are the work of the Open Source Pledge – a group that launched earlier this month. It asks businesses that make use of open source code to pledge $2,000 per developer to support projects that develop the code. So far, 25 companies have signed up – but project co-founder Chad Whitacre wants bigger firms to pay their dues, too.

  • jeinzi
    5·
    2 months ago

    Do you have an example? I am pretty sure that a FOSS license which requires companies to pay is impossible.

    Open Source guarantees that anyone can give the software to a company for free:

    “The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.”

    And it guarantees that the company can then use it freely:

    “The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business […]”

    Quotes from the Open Source Definition.