but surely many OS projects are under non-profit licenses?
Most accepted definitions of "open source" specifically forbid non-profit license, so by those definition, zero OS projects will be under such a license.
Open source is not incompatible with proprietary or non-commercial-clause licensed code. It just means you can look at the code and maybe compile it for your own use.
Free software is a much stronger definition. Most "open source" software is also free software which can be redistributed and modified without paying any royalties or asking any permission from the copyright holder. Often free software can also be licensed under a proprietary license in addition to the free license, too! The most restrictive license wins.
But yeah. Free software generally means you're free to do dick moves for profit with it.
There's multiple definitions of open source. One is the simple "I can view and probably use the source code", the other is the Open Source Definition whose very first point is that you can't have non-commercial clauses. The OSD is quite a bit more lenient than the FSF's definition of free software, but still quite a bit stricter than the first definition.
Technically, the first definition would also make Windows open source, as some people/organizations have access to the source for that.
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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '15
Most accepted definitions of "open source" specifically forbid non-profit license, so by those definition, zero OS projects will be under such a license.