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FUTO Keyboard: The Discussion Behind A Cool Product (tedium.co)

submitted 4 months ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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A pretty interesting take, and an interesting discussion about what it means to be open source. Is there room for a trusted space between open source and closed corporate software?

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[–] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Part of it is 'can the current license facilitate them doing a rug pull'. A LOT of the licenses on these new tech darlings are written in such a way that they absolutely can change the terms, close the source and/or dramatically restrict access, and you can go get fucked.

They use Contributor License Agreements to ensure they own all the rights, and whenever they feel it's advantageous for them, suddenly it's now under a new, more restrictive license because there's nothing in the old license that stops them from doing so.

I'm a big fan of actual, real, forced-to-stay-open licenses like the AGPL and very much against CLAs because those two stances are essential for what's open and useful staying open and useful.

Whatever this is licensed under is... not that.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, I appreciate it.

I just don't understand what is in the text of the License itself that would do so any differently than say the Apache 2.0 license.

Would you point me to the language you are referring to?

[–] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 7 points 4 months ago

It's less what's in FUTO's license, than what's NOT in the license.

The main problem with those cute little licenses is that if the right is not EXPLICITLY mentioned, you don't have it.

That license is more a list of thou-shalt-nots than outlining your rights to own and use the software: literally half of it is a list of things you cannot do.

It also doesn't require you to provide source code for your modifications, nor does it require you make it available AT ALL.

It also, at no point, says anything whatsoever about source code access - it merely says "the software" which could mean anything they want it to mean.

So basically it's a license telling you you have a license to their software, what you cannot do with it, and zero requirement that ANYONE share the source code.