this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

No, not in the way GP wrote. You're not allowed to have your license discriminate between users, so you'd have to sell your software to everyone, not just big companies.

Either no one pays, or everyone pays.

[–] airglow@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Open source software can be sold at different prices to different customers, and still remain open source. Open source software can also be sold only to certain types of customers, and still remain open source. Who the developer decides to sell or distribute the software to, and at what price, is unrelated to how the software is licensed.

However, because the Open Source Definition prohibits open source software licenses from discriminating against "any person or group of persons", the customers who buy open source software cannot be restricted from reselling or redistributing the software to any other individual or organization.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 2 points 56 minutes ago (1 children)

Right, which means that you practically cannot give open source software for free to non-corporations while selling it to corporations while still being fully open source, as the corporations can simply get it for free from any non-corporation.

[–] airglow@lemmy.world 1 points 55 minutes ago (1 children)
[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 2 points 44 minutes ago

I appreciate the clarification, thank you!