

Opinions (such as that the Earth is flat) can obviously be wrong. I thought I knew English, but apparently not. (I’m not a native speaker.) I always assumed that “opinion” meant the same as judgement (which is what I learned at school), but I just looked opinion up in the dictionary, and it can also mean belief or or view.
It’s been made very clear in the last decades that you (legally) don’t even own software that you pay for. You own a license to use the software. This is untrue. Legally speaking you “own” the software, but what you can do with the software is limited by both the copyright and the license. Often this license will say that the creator still owns the software, so by accepting the license, you no longer own the software. Today you often have to accept the license before you even download the software. So you are correct that the user doesn’t own the software, but that’s not the default. For example, FOSS licenses do not specify that the creator continues to own the software, therefore ownership is given to the user.
for all applications, not just FOSS ones, the people paying the fines would be the users, $2500 Nope. Since most licenses say that the developer is the owner, the fine would go to the developer. Also, the law says that the fine can go to the “maintainer” which, again, is the developer.
takes your advice I wasn’t giving advice. I’m saying that the decision is up to the court. But if you want legal advice (disclaimer: I am not a lawyer): Do not do anything of which the legality still has to be decided by a court.
That does not mean FOSS software is not affected I never said that. I said that FOSS software is affected differently if you take the law by the letter (which the courts don’t have to do).










But what good is it to know that breathing is illegal? (exhaling is illegal in the state of Tenessee since it disperses CO2 into the atmosphere)