Can malware qualify as free software?

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

The Wanderer:

Some people develop and distribute malware as free software. Do they deserve to 
be treated with respect for doing that?


I strongly suspect that malwares do not provide freedoms #1, #2, or #3 
out of the Four Freedoms.

Re: Can malware qualify as free software?

[The Wanderer]

On 2015-08-31 at 11:25, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:

> The Wanderer:
> 
>> Some people develop and distribute malware as free software. Do
>> they deserve to be treated with respect for doing that?
> 
> I strongly suspect that malwares do not provide freedoms #1, #2, or
> #3 out of the Four Freedoms.

They don't provide them to the people on whose machines they get
installed, but those people are not the "users" of the malware.

The "users" of the malware are the people who deploy it. If a malware
toolkit is provided with source, and under a "modify and redistribute as
you see fit" license, I don't see how it fails any of the Four Freedoms.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: Can malware qualify as free software?

[Reco]

 Hi.

On Mon, 31 Aug 2015 16:25:29 +0100
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard 
wrote:

> The Wanderer:
> > Some people develop and distribute malware as free software. Do they 
> > deserve to be treated with respect for doing that?
> 
> I strongly suspect that malwares do not provide freedoms #1, #2, or #3 
> out of the Four Freedoms.
> 

Depends on malware we're talking about. For example, famous Metasploit
Framework is provided as 3-clause BSD (although parts of it are
licensed on terms of GPL2, MIT and LGPL) - [1]. Free software at its
finest.

[1] https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework/blob/master/LICENSE

Reco