Arend van Beelen

@vas Yeah, that’s fair too. The project behind it is indeed a commercial entity, hence why they set it up that way.

Personally, I wouldn’t be too concerned about them failing to publish new versions, because then the last version will still remain open source forever. And even projects with an open governance model can run out of steam, so the risk might not be any greater here. But yeah, it’s good to be mindful of the risks and restrictions when starting any new project.

@vas @u_1f914 Uhm, sorry, but that’s not how it works. They’re making the project available under GPLv3, which is an OSI-approved open-source license. So yes, it is open source.

It has restrictions, including some that you may care about. But that doesn’t mean it’s not open source.

#OpenSource

@jenesaisquoi @Ordoviz It’s a gray area, legally. What you say is theoretically correct, but there’s practical issues once you’ve looked at the code that will open you up to legal liability anyway.

For instance, what if you need a utility function during your reimplementation for which there is really only one obvious implementation? You can no longer claim to have come up with it by yourself.

I doubt the FSF would sue over it, but companies are known to avoid the risk.