FLOSS Weekly with Doc Searls

Aug 30th 2023

FLOSS Weekly 747

New, Hot, Big, and Doomed

Business Software License, OpenELA Initiative

Although the show is no longer in production at TWiT, you can enjoy episodes from our archives.
Category: News

Doc Searls, Dan Lynch, and Jonathan Bennett talk about what happens when open source companies get too big for the licenses that helped them get there, and how their communities are dealing with that.

  • Red Hat recently changed its source code distribution rules, prompting other vendors like Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ to form the Open Enterprise Linux Association in response. What are the implications of these changes, and do Red Hat's actions violate the GPL?
  • Canonical's tight control over the LXD container management project, pulling it back in-house from the open source community which led to a community fork being created called Incus.
  • Companies like MongoDB and Hashicorp are moving away from open source licenses towards "source available" licenses like the Business Source License (BSL) that restrict commercial use.
  • There are growing concerns around using AI-generated code from tools like GitHub Copilot, and whether copyright and licensing restrictions carry over.
  • Apple reverses its stance on right-to-repair, with Apple throwing its support behind a California right-to-repair bill.
  • iFixit and Public Knowledge have been hit with a DMCA violation for creating a device that interacts with a McDonald's ice cream machine.

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