"Bookwyrm itself is non-free software"

LemonCake · February 18, 2026, 4:35pm

The bookwyrm client contains the title as a justification for the anti-feature tag.

Is it because of the anti-capitalist license?

LICENSE.md

main

ANTI-CAPITALIST SOFTWARE LICENSE (v 1.4)

Copyright © 2020 Mouse Reeve

This is anti-capitalist software, released for free use by individuals and organizations that do not operate by capitalist principles.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or organization (the "User") obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to use, copy, modify, merge, distribute, and/or sell copies of the Software, subject to the following conditions:

1. The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or modified versions of the Software.

2. The User is one of the following:

    1. An individual person, laboring for themselves
    2. A non-profit organization
    3. An educational institution
    4. An organization that seeks shared profit for all of its members, and allows non-members to set the cost of their labor

3. If the User is an organization with owners, then all owners are workers and all workers are owners with equal equity and/or equal vote.

4. If the User is an organization, then the User is not law enforcement or military, or working for or under either.

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Looking at the anti-feature description in F-Droid’s website, the “Non-free network service dependency” is defined as “This Anti-Feature is applied to apps that promote or depend entirely on a proprietary network service.”

While it’s an atypical license, it does seem a bit excessive to call it ‘proprietary software’. Does anyone know more about the reasoning behind the anti-feature description or if it would be appropriate to remove it?

Licaon_Kter · February 18, 2026, 4:40pm

they can choose any of these licenses marked Y or Y/Y: SPDX License List | Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) and we’ll remove the AF

namark · February 19, 2026, 6:17am

It contains vague verbiage that’s designed to restrict user freedom. Many people don’t understand how free software licences are designed to circumvent copyright law, not reiforce it. Some day Mouse Reeve in drunk delirium really gonna hate the look on someone’s face and gonna claim they are an individual who is labouring for their cousin’s spouse and not for themselves and sue. You can be a bit more lenient and call it a non-free license, but it’s essentially the same thing as proprietary, same idea of abusing copyright.

relan · February 19, 2026, 6:17am

I’m not a lawyer, but if a license discriminates some kinds of users, it’s non-free. Everything that’s not free is proprietary.

Quite ironic that an “anti-capitalist” license actually reinforces capitalist monopolies making “non-eligible” people use proprietary alternatives.

shuvashish76 · February 19, 2026, 8:22am

You can be a bit more lenient and call it a non-free license, but it’s essentially the same thing as proprietary, same idea of abusing copyright.

Better to contact FSF/OSI and if approved, add it to SPDX list. That license isn’t even listed in SPDX.

Switch to an OSI-approved license · Issue #3385 · bookwyrm-social/bookwyrm · GitHub