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Perhaps open source should update its license so that businesses profiting from it contribute a small portion of their earnings — say, 1% — to a global fund, whether allocated specifically to the open source maintainers and contributors or to the Decentralized Universal Kindness Income (DUKI /djuːki/) for all lives worldwide.

Still, most of these genius engineers likely don’t care much about such a small sum. They earn the honor and move on, while the charitable benefits flow to those who can monetize the software.


That wouldn't be compliant with the Open Source Definition, it says no discrimination against people, groups or fields of endeavour.

https://opensourcedefinition.org/

Thanks for the kind reminder.

After reviewing the definition and interacting with an AI, I see that it does indeed exclude this type of use. However, I feel these definitions create unnecessary divisions and discrimination.

It seems unfair to projects with open source code under non-standard licenses, as they are prevented from using the term that aligns with how most people worldwide perceive it. The definition has also effectively made an enemy of money, which may be the root reason the author advocates for funding open source like public infrastructure.

Personally, I wish “Open Source” could simply reflect its literal meaning—the one that most people perceive: that the source is open for any purpose, provided the specified rules are met. In my view, as long as the rules set by the maintainers apply to everyone equally, they do not constitute discrimination. You just have to follow the rules of the game if you want to play.

That sounds like what the Open Source Definition does.
> That wouldn’t comply with the Open Source Definition, which prohibits discrimination against any person, group, or field of endeavor.

If a DUKI-licensed project (similar to MIT, but requiring a business using it freely to “donate 1% of its net profits to a global fund”), how does this conflict with the Open Source Definition and prevent it from being called open source?

> a business

This is the discriminatory part. If you made the fee requirement of everyone regardless of the type of organisation they are part of or not part of, then that might be OSD-compliant.

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