Semi-free software

Semi-free software ( English semi-free software ) is software used by individuals used free of charge for non-commercial purposes, copied, can be modified and pass on their commercial use is, however, bound by restrictions. The restrictions can be significant or marginal depending on the license.

The term goes back to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) founded in 1985 . Software of this class does not fall under free software and is rejected by the FSF with the argument that the exclusion of commercial use is a self-serving restriction. Since 2012, the FSF has not made a distinction between semi-free and non-free software and has placed the use of such adapted licenses in its category of non-free ( proprietary ) software.

motivation

Semi-free software is created against the background that some program developers who have not been paid by a company for their programming work actually see their ideal use as free help for other private users and want to limit the free use to this application. The possible commercial use of free software under most of the usual licenses (e.g. GPL, BSD, Apache, Public Domain etc.) does not seem desirable to some of these developers.

This was also motivated by particularly controversial business and usage models. For example, the programmers of the Amiga emulator WinUae were annoyed that the company Cloanto was selling the emulator in a collection with various games and auxiliary programs as the Amiga Forever Pack for around 60 dollars. The eMule developers were confronted with companies like 3PO Web-Invest , who created and sold a new proprietary version ( eMcrypt-Emule ) that differed from the original only through the addition of spyware . They perceive the fact that such practices are permissible under copyright law in the case of free software as a defect in the software license and have made corresponding restrictions and thus their own license variants . Such restricted software was then provided by the FSF with the addition half (semi) in the term semi-free software .

Another source of such software can be companies whose software has reached the commercial end of life and now want to make it available to the user community, but introduce restrictions (e.g. non-commercial or exclusively private use) into the license. This is often intended to prevent software from degenerating into unavailable and no longer maintainable abandonware .

Licenses

Well-known licenses that lead to software releases that can be counted under this classification include, for example, the Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-SA, which does not allow commercial re-use, the MAME license or various shared source licenses from Microsoft with various restrictions.

In addition, there is a large number of very different company or software product-specific licenses that can be understood as semi-free software licenses.

Examples

In 2013, Adobe Inc. donated Photoshop 1.0.1 to the Computer History Museum . The source code was published under a license that allows private re-use, but commercial re-use is prohibited.

Examples of end-of-life publications as semi-free software from the computer game sector are Homeworld , Myth II or Allegiance .

Web links

Free Software Foundation: Categories of free and non-free software

Individual evidence

^ Categories of free and nonfree software , GNU Project, Free Software Foundation, Retrieved March 3, 2012
^ John Bell: Opening the Source of Art . Technology Innovation Management Review. October 1, 2009. Retrieved December 30, 2012: “ [...] that no further patches to the title would be forthcoming. The community was predictably upset. Instead of giving up on the game, users decided that if Activision wasn't going to fix the bugs, they would. They wanted to save the game by getting Activision to open the source so it could be kept alive beyond the point where Activision lost interest. With some help from members of the development team that were active on fan forums, they were eventually able to convince Activision to release Call to Power II's source code in October of 2003. "
↑ Bryan Bishop: Adobe releases Photoshop original source code for developers nostalgic ( English ) theverge.com. February 14, 2013. Retrieved October 15, 2013.
↑ Adobe Photoshop Source Code
↑ Bob Colayco: Microsoft pledges Allegiance to its fanbase ( English ) gamespot.com. February 6, 2004. Retrieved July 22, 2011: “ The release of the source code came in response to the enthusiasm of Allegiance's small-but-dedicated fanbase. Microsoft's Joel Dehlin commented that the development team has, "been amazed at the level to which some of the Allegiance fans have remained hard-core. We're astounded at the progress that has been made at creating new factions, hosting new servers, replacing authentication, etc. It seems that Allegiance hasn't really died. With that in mind, we're releasing the Allegiance source code to the community. " "
↑ Andy Largent: Homeworld Source Code Released ( English ) www.insidemacgames.com. October 8, 2003. Retrieved November 24, 2012: " With the release of Homeworld 2 for the PC, Relic Entertainment has decided to give back to their impressive fan community by releasing the source code to the original Homeworld. "
^ Howard Wen: Keeping the Myths Alive ( English ) linuxdevcenter.com. June 10, 2004. Retrieved December 22, 2012: " [...] fans of the Myth trilogy have taken this idea a step further: they have official access to the source code for the Myth games. Organized under the name MythDevelopers, this all-volunteer group of programmers, artists, and other talented people devote their time to improving and supporting further development of the Myth game series. "

[1] Categories of free and nonfree software , GNU Project, Free Software Foundation, Retrieved March 3, 2012

[timcalltopower2-2] John Bell: Opening the Source of Art . Technology Innovation Management Review. October 1, 2009. Retrieved December 30, 2012: “ [...] that no further patches to the title would be forthcoming. The community was predictably upset. Instead of giving up on the game, users decided that if Activision wasn't going to fix the bugs, they would. They wanted to save the game by getting Activision to open the source so it could be kept alive beyond the point where Activision lost interest. With some help from members of the development team that were active on fan forums, they were eventually able to convince Activision to release Call to Power II's source code in October of 2003. "

[3] Bryan Bishop: Adobe releases Photoshop original source code for developers nostalgic ( English ) theverge.com. February 14, 2013. Retrieved October 15, 2013.

[4] Adobe Photoshop Source Code

[allegiancesource-5] Bob Colayco: Microsoft pledges Allegiance to its fanbase ( English ) gamespot.com. February 6, 2004. Retrieved July 22, 2011: “ The release of the source code came in response to the enthusiasm of Allegiance's small-but-dedicated fanbase. Microsoft's Joel Dehlin commented that the development team has, "been amazed at the level to which some of the Allegiance fans have remained hard-core. We're astounded at the progress that has been made at creating new factions, hosting new servers, replacing authentication, etc. It seems that Allegiance hasn't really died. With that in mind, we're releasing the Allegiance source code to the community. " "

[homesource-6] Andy Largent: Homeworld Source Code Released ( English ) www.insidemacgames.com. October 8, 2003. Retrieved November 24, 2012: " With the release of Homeworld 2 for the PC, Relic Entertainment has decided to give back to their impressive fan community by releasing the source code to the original Homeworld. "

[mythalive2004-7] Howard Wen: Keeping the Myths Alive ( English ) linuxdevcenter.com. June 10, 2004. Retrieved December 22, 2012: " [...] fans of the Myth trilogy have taken this idea a step further: they have official access to the source code for the Myth games. Organized under the name MythDevelopers, this all-volunteer group of programmers, artists, and other talented people devote their time to improving and supporting further development of the Myth game series. "