@ondrej Could the compliance avenue be a way to end this? I mean, most companies have anti-slavery / anti-exploitative workplace compliance regulation in place. What if "not paying for OSS usage in revenue bearing products" was defined as exploitative...?
@christopherkunz @ondrej in theory, sure, but the FOSS licenses themselves allow for it.
Some more than others.
Side note: And this ties to vibe coding llms trained on FOSS as well.
We have always had the problem of non-payment in FOSS from companies that depend on their use. It's been on my mind since the 90s and impacted what I worked on.
In a world where wolves find openings, we need better armed sheep. 🤔
@knowprose @christopherkunz Absolutely not! We need more ethical wolves, not better armed sheep. In other words, we need less selfish society and less divided less exploitative people.
@ondrej @christopherkunz yes. That is better. 🙃
Oct 23, 2026, 10:28 AM@christopherkunz @ondrej isn't this a question of the license? I am not an expert, but MIT allows people to exploit you, while other licenses disallow commercial use so you'd need to negotiate a license deal.
Oct 23, 2026, 10:40 AM@hysteretic @christopherkunz @ondrej an open source license cannot "disallow commercial use" - as that would disqualify them from being open source
Oct 23, 2026, 10:41 AM@bagder @christopherkunz @ondrej that makes sense, thank you