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cientifico 5 days ago

Can you clarify the following sentence:

> We are open-source (https://github.com/cactus-compute/cactus). Cactus is free for hobbyists and personal projects, with a paid license required for commercial use.

If it is open-source, one is free to distribute even for commercial use by definition. Which one is correct and what's your business model?

kvakkefly 5 days ago | parent [-]

Why do you believe open source means free to use and distribute commercially?

cientifico 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Because that’s literally the definition of open source:

> Open-source software is software released under a license where the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code, for any purpose.

That’s the first result you get on Google—and it’s exactly why so many companies relicensed their projects (Redis, HashiCorp, Elasticsearch, MongoDB…).

If it’s open source, you can sell it, host it, or give it away for free. The only difference is which obligations the license attaches:

GPL → you must keep the license.

AGPL → you must keep it and extend it to hosted services.

BSD/MIT → do almost whatever you want.

But the core right is always the same: distribute, host, and sell. Courts have even confirmed this is the accepted definition of “open source.”

Cheer2171 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you joking or just new? This is a foundational, bedrock principal of open source.

https://opensource.org/faq#commercial