Is It Really Open Source? How to Tell if a Project Walks the Walk
FOSS Force, Monday, August 25th, 2025
Not all open source is created equal, argues open source advocate, Nextcloud co-founder, and FOSS Force guest writer Jos Poortvliet.
Free software licenses were conceived as a way to move power from software providers to users, but this burden is often too much for the license alone. There are plenty of ways in which an open source project can be less free than its license suggests, but how do you tell? One way is through a new website, Is It Really FOSS, which aims to provide users with insight into the actual freedom they can expect from a project advertising itself as open source.
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