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Published 20 hours ago • verified publisher icon hexchat

Open Source -> Free Software

Open seirl opened this issue 10 years ago • 6 comments

seirl avatar Aug 31 '15 12:08 seirl

The previous sentence says "HexChat is completely free" so this would just make it confusing. And no, adding libre-gratis / speech-beer in parentheses is not the solution to that problem.

Arnavion avatar Aug 31 '15 15:08 Arnavion

Well that line is about XChat and XChat made others GPL'd code proprietary so calling it free software is a stretch :P

TingPing avatar Aug 31 '15 15:08 TingPing

The point is, the implication "open source" => "allowed to do a fork" is completely wrong, and may induce people in error.

seirl avatar Aug 31 '15 15:08 seirl

How about "Since XChat on Unix is under the GPL it's perfectly legal". I agree that calling it free would cause confusion.

TingPing avatar Aug 31 '15 15:08 TingPing

I don't see why we should even point out that it's legal. Just remove that sentence entirely.

Arnavion avatar Aug 31 '15 20:08 Arnavion

I imagine in the early days of the project a lot of naive windows users questioned the legality of it, as if it was pirating or something since XChat cost $20.

TingPing avatar Aug 31 '15 21:08 TingPing