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2024-08-17 19:51:18

Hector Martin on Nostr: Someone had me look at the EUPL as a license that is supposedly free and OSI ...

Someone had me look at the EUPL as a license that is supposedly free and OSI certified and closes the SaaS loophole and... IANAL but I don't like what I see.

https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/112979037685332699

I firmly believe it is not possible for a license to be both Free Software (specifically, respecting Freedom Zero: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose) and close the SaaS loophole at the same time.

Either you interpret the EUPL such that it closes the SaaS loophole, or you interpret it such that it upholds Freedom Zero. You can't have both.

Unfortunately, Freedom Zero is absent from the OSI definition of free software, which allows the EUPL to be OSI certified. This is a glaring omission from the Open Source Definition, as it quite literally allows EULAs (you can attach a requirement that all users pay a usage fee to a license and, if you read carefully, that doesn't violate any of the OSI OSD requirements!).

TL;DR either the EUPL is just another FOSS license that doesn't close the SaaS loophole, or it is a nonfree EULA. You can't have your cake and eat it too, regardless of what OSI says.
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