Copyright applied to computer software is a relatively new construct. Engineers that have collaborated on software since the beginning of the industry needed to incorporate ways to continue collaborating in the face of copyright requirements. Software freedom was an early experiment that remains with us to this day.
The open source definition was layered onto the free software world over 20 years ago. For the past few years, we have seen challenges arise to the open source definition that wrestle with concerns over cloud service providers, start-ups, and ethics and field of use concerns. This talk proposes to review these concerns through the underlying lens of engineers collaborating and the definition of software freedom.
Coming back to first principles, it is hoped that ideas can be presented that will protect the engineering collaborations regardless of open source debates, and provide context for future challenges.