Licensing: Being Paid for Software Freedom and a Win for GPL in French Court
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Jacob Kaplan Moss ☛ Paying people to work on open source is good actually?
This went mildly viral, and I got a ton of arguments and pushback. (Also a lot of “right on"s, which was nice.) I think some of that pushback was bad-faith and uncharitable reads, but some was coming from well-intentioned misunderstandings or misreadings of my snarky toot. That’s my fault for talking around what I mean instead of coming out and saying it. So that’s this post: upgrading my shitpost to a slightly-more-considered rant.My fundamental position is that paying people to work on open source is good, full stop, no exceptions. We need to stop criticizing maintainers getting paid, and start celebrating. Yes, all of the mechanisms are flawed in some way, but that’s because the world is flawed, and it’s not the fault of the people taking money. Yelling at maintainers who’ve found a way to make a living is wrong.
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Heather J Meeker ☛ French Court Issues Damages Award for Violation of GPL
On February 14, 2024, the Court of Appeal of Paris issued an order stating that Orange, a major French telecom provider, had infringed the copyight of Entr’Ouvert’s Lasso software and violated the GPL, ordering Orange to pay €500,000 in compensatory damages and €150,000 for moral damages. This case has been ongoing for many years.