Busting 5 Myths about OSS and Software Licenses

Find a few historical myths about free and open source software (further referred to as FOSS) licenses busted in this article.

This is not always true. Price-wise, not all free software (more accurate term — proprietary freeware) is open source. Freedom-wise, not all open source software is free.

Following the above, another interpretation of the term “free software” is “not GPL-covered” — software that gives the user complete freedom with the source code and any derivatives.

Per copyleft license terms, you decide how to distribute your own software that utilizes copyleft-license — either free of charge or for $1K — yet you are obliged to make the derivative’s source code open. And you can certainly sell any supplementary services for the software, like technical support and maintenance, warranties, and other assurances.

Some websites where you can find somebody’s source code or publish your own code require users to accept their Terms of Services; this is a sort of copyright. In the case with GitHub, for example, by accepting the TOS, you grant others the rights to view and fork your repository and become eligible to do the same with others’ repositories too.

LIMITED WARRANTY
Microsoft warrants that properly licensed software will perform substantially as described in any Microsoft materials that accompany the software… Microsoft excludes all implied warranties and conditions, including those of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

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Do you know other FOSS myths and blind spots? Share them with us via hi@logicify.com! We would be curious to know them.

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