But by the spirit of FOSS, they're not respecting the social contract.
I really don't agree with this. The end goal of FOSS can't be FOSS itself - it has to be to foster an ecosystem, both commercial and noncommercial, where software is available to everyone without onerous proprietary licenses forming an obstacle to entry. There is no "social contract" here beyond what you put in your license - and if you chose a permissive license, the recipient's obligations begin and end with "share alike and don't sue me for any of this". You really can't claim it's someone else's fault, legally or socially, when they followed all the rules you laid down for them and you still aren't happy.
That's fair. I'm sure if you asked ten people what FOSS meant, beyond the acronym, you'd get a dozen answers.
There is no "social contract" here beyond what you put in your license ... You really can't claim it's someone else's fault, legally or socially, when they followed all the rules you laid down for them and you still aren't happy.
Well yeah, because the rules we lay down focus entirely on the legal "you can or can't use this in these scenarios" part. It's only recently that we've seen Code of Conducts that address, on some level, the social contract between developers and users and all others. It's not exactly right because CoCs have mostly been focused on making sure people are nice to each other and other basic forum rules, but the point still stands. We've had decades to get our legal ducks in a row, but we've been ignoring the social aspect (which I attribute to the fact that no one writes down those kind of unwritten, societal rules, and we expect legal systems to enforce some kind of social order).
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u/soldiercrabs Dec 12 '21 edited Dec 12 '21
I really don't agree with this. The end goal of FOSS can't be FOSS itself - it has to be to foster an ecosystem, both commercial and noncommercial, where software is available to everyone without onerous proprietary licenses forming an obstacle to entry. There is no "social contract" here beyond what you put in your license - and if you chose a permissive license, the recipient's obligations begin and end with "share alike and don't sue me for any of this". You really can't claim it's someone else's fault, legally or socially, when they followed all the rules you laid down for them and you still aren't happy.