The history of the Free and Open Source Software movement has shown that the proliferation of incompatible copyright licenses which prohibit software from being legally combined creates more obstacles than opportunities for our movement. Any new copyright licenses for use with cooperative software must be written with this consideration in mind to intentionally avoid fracturing the software ecosystem. Adopting incompatible copyright licenses for different software would make it easy for our adversaries to divide and suppress the movement. Language is constructed collectively and is always evolving. It is counterproductive to our movement to refuse to collaborate with people because they use the words "open source" or "free software" to describe their work. They may even disagree with the entire premise of this document. That does not mean we should not work together towards shared goals, but we should be conscious that our goals may not perfectly align and this may cause tension in our communities from time to time.

We invite anyone to collaborate with us who is interested in building a better world and treats us and others in our communities with dignity and respect. This document is licensed under the CC0 license. Contributions are welcome on Codeberg. If you disagree with parts of this, feel free to fork it and say what you want to say.

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