Today FUTO released an application called Grayjay for Android-based mobile phones. Louis Rossmann introduced the application in a video (YouTube link). Grayjay as an application is very promising, but there is one point I take issue with: Grayjay is not an Open Source application. In the video Louis explains his reason behind the custom license, and while I do agree with his reason, I strong disagree with his method. In this post I will explain what Open Source means, how Grayjay does not meet the criteria, why this is an issue, and how it can be solved.
That’s a common misunderstanding of FLOSS software: it isn’t about “not letting others profit”, it’s about “you need to give back in order to profit”.
If a company wants to profit from someone else’s GPL licensed software, they can do it in exchange for letting the original company profit from the second one’s changes to the software.
If you don’t want to profit from other people’s changes to your software, then by all means, use a more restrictive license, there won’t be changes in the first place.
If you’re a user expecting the software to work after the original company got bored with it or gone under, then you want either a different company to take over, or you’re SOL.
This is a great clarification, thank you. I edited my comment to point to yours there.