About software licenses

Created: 2025-05-01, never modified since

THIS POST IS A DRAFT

- Allemansrätten

- Princip

- Why we open source

Key points

- Licenses like GPL is counteracting the free software movement.

A short lesson about the Swedish heritage

In Sweden, we have allemansrätten - the Freedom to Roam, loosly translated. Allemansrätten is a principle that gives a person the right to access, walk, cycle, ride, ski, and camp on any land - with the exception of private gardens. The maxim is "do not disturb, do not destroy".

Why do we open source?

I open source because of the freedoms it gives me. It makes me able to do what the fuck I want with my code. I love that. I love the principle of being able to freely do whatever I want.

And so with free software, the core principle is that it is *free*. However, by marking our code with licenses like the GPL, we are litteraly imposing restrictions on our software, in direct

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Freedom to roam", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 4.0.

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Authors:

- ludv

- Wikipedia contributors

Except where otherwise noted, this entry, including any assets or other pages under the same URL path (/entries/copyleft-licence-problems/), is marked with CC BY-SA 4.0.