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by kristjansson·5y ago·view on hn ↗
This seems unnecessarily cynical. The large block of caveats seems mainly designed set expectations for potential users about the level of (total lack of) support.

Using (and modifying!) a piece of software in accordance with its license is not appropriation, it's the point of open source! Users - even corporate users - are free to make changes to suit their needs and aren't required to seek anyone's permission do so. All changes do not need be contributed back to the parent project, especially if (as the sibling comment notes) the changes don't align with the goals and values of parent.

That this hacked-up internal fork is even seeing the light of day is a Good Thing.

1 comments
Open source was never meant for "corporate users". The spirit of open source was to create free alternative to expensive software so that disadvantaged people could also participate in a digital revolution. The whole movement was then appropriated by big corporations when they found out the developers will do the R&D work for free (so corporations don't have to pay salaries and taxes on the work done) and then if any of the projects become valuable they can just take it and use for their own purposes, make money and never pay original developers anything whatsoever. Of course some companies felt guilty and offered jobs to those developers - but when you compare how much money they made on the software vs what kind of salaries they pay, it's pure simple exploitation. The whole open source movement currently is designed to exploit developers and is a mean for companies to avoid paying for labour.