9 ms·

> Open-source is used broadly to define a way of developing software, but it says nothing about the rights it gives users. That is totally wrong and a myth spr

by hannob 9y ago

> Open-source is used broadly to define a way of developing software, but it says nothing about the rights it gives users. That is totally wrong and a myth spread by people who like to call their products "Open Source" while they aren't. The Open Source Definition is very clear: https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd Practically there is no difference between Open Source licenses and Free Software licenses. The difference is merely a philosophical one - whether you emphasis the "freedom" aspect or the "openness of the code" aspect. Bruce Perens just wrote something about it: https://perens.com/blog/2017/09/26/on-usage-of-the-phrase-open-source/ https://perens.com/blog/2017/09/26/on-usage-of-the-phrase-op...

watwut 9y ago
They are different. I have open source contributions and I am cool giving away code free (and use others code of course). E.g. open source as Apache license. I disagree with free software peoples opinions often and don't want much contact with that community (prefer less ideological communities and less my-way-is-the-only-way and if-you-want-something-different-then-me-you-are-stupid communities).
- hannob 9y ago
  That's the philosophical difference I was talking about. Doesn't change the fact that all code you release under an Apache license is free software in the sense of the four freedoms as defined by the FSF. Whether you like their ways or not.
  - SEJeff 9y ago
    That is somewhat debatable I suppose. The freedom (if you want to quote RMS) absolutely includes the so called viral provisions of licenses such as the GPL. RMS is quoted as saying proprietary software should be illegal. As a software engineer myself, I find that sort of demagoguery a bit tiring, and consider a license with less mandatory stipulations as more "free" (admittedly under a different definition than the FSF) than one that has required stipulations. As a result of this, there are many people like the parent, and myself, who could really care less about Free Software but find open source development as one of the most effective software development methodologies. Is all OSS I release also Free Software? Sure! Can someone relicense something I publish with a MIT/Apache license as proprietary software without releasing the code? Sure! My definition is more free = less restrictions, and more restrictions = less free. By that definition, the GPL is a less free (as in freedom for the users / consumers) than the MIT / Apache / BSD.
    - danielbarla 9y ago
      Yepp, it's a trade off between the rights of the developer and the rights of the consumer / user, you fundamentally can't have both (simplification). RMS goes all on the latter side, essentially.
      - alexvoda 9y ago
        Like with most of RMSs terminology, I disagree with the dichotomy of developer vs user. Freedom 1 and 3 apply specifically to users who are or will become developers. I believe what we actually want to talk about is publisher vs user/consumer instead of developer vs user. The FSF people really like their ambiguous terminology, unfortunately.
        Karunamon 9y ago
        It's an important distinction IMO. Roughly 99% of the GPL is irrelevant to the end user if they don't have all of the knowledge, desire, and time to crack open the code and modify it.
        digi_owl 9y ago
        Even if they themselves do not, they have the possibility of finding someone that does.
        Karunamon 9y ago
        And that's the remaining 1% :)
        digi_owl 9y ago
        I an honestly not sure RMS would make such a distinction. It seems more like one that has grown in into being in more recent years, particularly with the rise of mobile and web.
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        I am not sure RMS makes such a distinction. To him all users are potential developers (or programmers more likely). Frankly he is more concerned with who actually control the computing hardware and software being in use on a daily basis. Keep in mind that one of the issues that got him on his quest was the loss of the ability to modify a printer driver to message those with a print job in the queue that the printer was out of paper. It may seem frivolous, but it made life that much nicer at MIT. Because once the printer down the hall was out, any number of people may converge on it to fix it once they got the message. Without it, any number of print jobs may be sitting in wait because nobody had checked if there were still paper ready before adding another job to the queue.
- AsyncAwait 9y ago
  Ironically, I see the attitude you describe in the open-source community quite often, specifically the BSD community is quite vocal about being more 'level headed' than the GPL community and more 'mature'.
  - watwut 9y ago
    As someone who has zero contact with anyone BSD and have no idea about their community, I have no idea. As far as I am concerned, there is no open source community as single entity. There are comunities around concrete projects, some better then others. Anyone pretending to represent whole open source is usually doing it for politics and ego.
    - DonHopkins 9y ago
      >Anyone pretending to represent whole open source is usually doing it for politics and ego. Please don't judge the whole open source community by ESR.
- belorn 9y ago
  > less ideological communities and less my-way-is-the-only-way and if-you-want-something-different-then-me-you-are-stupid You mean like rewriting entire projects, just because they have the wrong open source defined license? Tell me, which operative systems welcome all software that the Open source initiative define as open source, and which operative systems do only allow a very narrow list of licenses that match a specific ideology?
  - watwut 9y ago
    Not sure what you ask? If the license they use is incompatible with projects license, then of course it is ok to rewrite it? And of course it is also ok to rewrite project for arbitrary reasons like that you don't like the maintainer.
    - belorn 9y ago
      Rewriting software just because it do not perfectly match a communities opinion about licenses is the least pragmatic way to go about software. It is the my-way-is-the-only-way approach, rather than working together and work with a mix of licenses and focus on the code. Diversity in licenses is a sign of cooperation.
      - watwut 9y ago
        What is the alternative, break the license or change your own? If I want to allow my library in closed code, I cant import GPL. Hence, I have to rewrite it. Rewriting Apache into GPL makes little sense, but is little work. You can just import it and slap GPL on top. You cant just mix licenses, because licenses disallow/allow activities.
        belorn 9y ago
        Take a operative system like debian. It has a huge number of packages in every combination and mix of open source defined and free software defined license. It does not limit itself to only use code that closed code can use. The community embrace license diversity, and thus has very little "my-way-is-the-only-way". As a practice, if they can avoid writing their own stuff they do so, always look around them and see if someone else has already written what they need. They use the "if-you-want-something-different-then-me-you-might-be-right" attitude to code, happy abandoning anything home brewed. You can't have both a no-ideological community and "no gpl welcome". Either you welcome everyone and focus on getting code to work, or you exclude based on licenses and reinvent the wheel. The question you need to ask is what is important for you. If the most important thing for the project is the license choice, then be upfront about the ideological choice that such goal is. If the goal is to get working code that will use any software you can legally use, then a more pragmatic approach is more suitable. I personally don't run operative system which focus more on the license rather than getting things done. My work also don't pay me for license choices, but they do for code that works and create value for the customers. I could put agpl code on the servers and you know what, no one would object.
morganvachon 9y ago
They are different, and that's fine. Personally I lean more towards the BSD/MIT style of licensing than GPL; I feel the former is "more free" from the developer's side because it doesn't tell her what she can't do with her code. The GPL forces the developer's hand (though in a way that benefits society as a whole), whereas BSD says "it's your code, do what you will". All of that said, the GPL is perhaps one of the most important parts of the modern software ecosystem; without it we wouldn't have Linux, and FOSS as we know it wouldn't exist. The world is a better place because of the GPL.
- hannob 9y ago
  The BSD/GPL question is independent of the free software / open source term. Both the OSI and the FSF accept GPL and BSD-style licenses. So both GPL and BSD code is free software and open source software.
  - morganvachon 9y ago
    Are you sure about that? gnu.org has a huge beef with BSD, they are actively campaigning for any developer considering BSD to use GPL instead[1]. Basically, anything that is not 100% copyleft is considered non-Free by GNU and FSF. Again, that doesn't bother me; to each their own. I'm not a developer so you might say I have no skin in this issue. However, I stand by my assertion that BSD gives the lone developer more freedom at the expense of social needs, whereas the GPL takes freedom away from the lone developer but puts necessary power in the hands of society as a whole (the so-called "viral" aspect of GPL). Neither is "right" or "wrong", and I'm happy we have a choice at all. [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/bsd.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/bsd.en.html
    - hannob 9y ago
      > gnu.org has a huge beef with BSD, they are actively campaigning for any developer considering BSD to use GPL instead[1]. Basically, anything that is not 100% copyleft is considered non-Free by GNU and FSF. Not true. Just look here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html Plenty of BSD-ish licenses that are in the free software categories. The FSF's and GNU proejct's position is that they prefer GPL over BSD, but nowhere do they say BSDish licensed code is not free software.
jrochkind1 9y ago
So, there _is_ a difference. But it's _not_ true that open source (as defined by OSI) says "nothing" about the rights it gives users. It says something. "free software" says something else/more (which may or may not be a good thing, that's a value judgement). "free software" is indeed an (intentionally) confusing name meant to discredit "open source".
- Phlogistique 9y ago
  > "free software" is indeed an (intentionally) confusing name meant to discredit "open source". That's factually wrong. The word "free software" was invented before.
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  You've got the directions of the arrow of time and cause and effect backwards. "Free Software" and "Copyleft" came WAY first. "Open Software" came later, and was meant to intentionally and personally discredit RMS, "free software" and "Copyleft".
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrochkind1 9y ago
    OK, thanks for the correction. I still think it's important to note that a) they are NOT "the same" (as some people in the thread are saying), and b) "open source" as defined by OSI does NOT "say nothing about the rights it gives users" (as other people in the thread are saying). Neither are true.
pksadiq 9y ago
> The difference is merely a philosophical one NO. They can be very different practically. For example, your Android phone/router contains open source software pieces (and very likely have GPLv2 licensed code). You get the source code of those, but you may not be able to change them. So yes, they are open source, but not free software. Open source means the code is open, and you can do anything with the code (licensing restrictions implied). Free software extends that further to have freedom to run modified code on the same device[0] (See freedom 1 and its explanation: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish). This is a very important distinction between free software and open source software. This was one of the primary reasons why GNU GPLv3 was introduced. So in many occasions, open source != free software. [0]https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
- nailer 9y ago
  > You get the source code of those, but you may not be able to change them. Yes you can. See https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated : > 3. Derived Works > The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
  - pksadiq 9y ago
    >> You get the source code of those, but you may not be able to change them. > Yes you can. See https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated Well. I have explained about that in the above comment. I'm not saying that you can't modify the source. But open source software don't require the user to be able to run the modified versions on the same device, free software do. So the same software can be both free software and open source or open source only based on where the code is run.
    - nailer 9y ago
      Where in The Free Software Definition https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html does it require the user to be able to run the modified versions on the same device?
fish_fan 9y ago
Err, this is the myth that keeps spreading mysteriously. There are absolutely massive differences between open source and free software. Why would you want to be open but not free unless you wanted to restrict the use of the code you “opened”.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Not mysteriously at all. There is big money to be made by muddying this water.

by hannob 9y ago

watwut 9y ago

They are different. I have open source contributions and I am cool giving away code free (and use others code of course). E.g. open source as Apache license. I disagree with free software peoples opinions often and don't want much contact with that community (prefer less ideological communities and less my-way-is-the-only-way and if-you-want-something-different-then-me-you-are-stupid communities).

hannob 9y ago
That's the philosophical difference I was talking about. Doesn't change the fact that all code you release under an Apache license is free software in the sense of the four freedoms as defined by the FSF. Whether you like their ways or not.
- SEJeff 9y ago
  That is somewhat debatable I suppose. The freedom (if you want to quote RMS) absolutely includes the so called viral provisions of licenses such as the GPL. RMS is quoted as saying proprietary software should be illegal. As a software engineer myself, I find that sort of demagoguery a bit tiring, and consider a license with less mandatory stipulations as more "free" (admittedly under a different definition than the FSF) than one that has required stipulations. As a result of this, there are many people like the parent, and myself, who could really care less about Free Software but find open source development as one of the most effective software development methodologies. Is all OSS I release also Free Software? Sure! Can someone relicense something I publish with a MIT/Apache license as proprietary software without releasing the code? Sure! My definition is more free = less restrictions, and more restrictions = less free. By that definition, the GPL is a less free (as in freedom for the users / consumers) than the MIT / Apache / BSD.
  - danielbarla 9y ago
    Yepp, it's a trade off between the rights of the developer and the rights of the consumer / user, you fundamentally can't have both (simplification). RMS goes all on the latter side, essentially.
    - alexvoda 9y ago
      Like with most of RMSs terminology, I disagree with the dichotomy of developer vs user. Freedom 1 and 3 apply specifically to users who are or will become developers. I believe what we actually want to talk about is publisher vs user/consumer instead of developer vs user. The FSF people really like their ambiguous terminology, unfortunately.
      - Karunamon 9y ago
        It's an important distinction IMO. Roughly 99% of the GPL is irrelevant to the end user if they don't have all of the knowledge, desire, and time to crack open the code and modify it.
        digi_owl 9y ago
        Even if they themselves do not, they have the possibility of finding someone that does.
        Karunamon 9y ago
        And that's the remaining 1% :)
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        I an honestly not sure RMS would make such a distinction. It seems more like one that has grown in into being in more recent years, particularly with the rise of mobile and web.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      I am not sure RMS makes such a distinction. To him all users are potential developers (or programmers more likely). Frankly he is more concerned with who actually control the computing hardware and software being in use on a daily basis. Keep in mind that one of the issues that got him on his quest was the loss of the ability to modify a printer driver to message those with a print job in the queue that the printer was out of paper. It may seem frivolous, but it made life that much nicer at MIT. Because once the printer down the hall was out, any number of people may converge on it to fix it once they got the message. Without it, any number of print jobs may be sitting in wait because nobody had checked if there were still paper ready before adding another job to the queue.
AsyncAwait 9y ago
Ironically, I see the attitude you describe in the open-source community quite often, specifically the BSD community is quite vocal about being more 'level headed' than the GPL community and more 'mature'.
- watwut 9y ago
  As someone who has zero contact with anyone BSD and have no idea about their community, I have no idea. As far as I am concerned, there is no open source community as single entity. There are comunities around concrete projects, some better then others. Anyone pretending to represent whole open source is usually doing it for politics and ego.
  - DonHopkins 9y ago
    >Anyone pretending to represent whole open source is usually doing it for politics and ego. Please don't judge the whole open source community by ESR.
belorn 9y ago
> less ideological communities and less my-way-is-the-only-way and if-you-want-something-different-then-me-you-are-stupid You mean like rewriting entire projects, just because they have the wrong open source defined license? Tell me, which operative systems welcome all software that the Open source initiative define as open source, and which operative systems do only allow a very narrow list of licenses that match a specific ideology?
- watwut 9y ago
  Not sure what you ask? If the license they use is incompatible with projects license, then of course it is ok to rewrite it? And of course it is also ok to rewrite project for arbitrary reasons like that you don't like the maintainer.
  - belorn 9y ago
    Rewriting software just because it do not perfectly match a communities opinion about licenses is the least pragmatic way to go about software. It is the my-way-is-the-only-way approach, rather than working together and work with a mix of licenses and focus on the code. Diversity in licenses is a sign of cooperation.
    - watwut 9y ago
      What is the alternative, break the license or change your own? If I want to allow my library in closed code, I cant import GPL. Hence, I have to rewrite it. Rewriting Apache into GPL makes little sense, but is little work. You can just import it and slap GPL on top. You cant just mix licenses, because licenses disallow/allow activities.
      - belorn 9y ago
        Take a operative system like debian. It has a huge number of packages in every combination and mix of open source defined and free software defined license. It does not limit itself to only use code that closed code can use. The community embrace license diversity, and thus has very little "my-way-is-the-only-way". As a practice, if they can avoid writing their own stuff they do so, always look around them and see if someone else has already written what they need. They use the "if-you-want-something-different-then-me-you-might-be-right" attitude to code, happy abandoning anything home brewed. You can't have both a no-ideological community and "no gpl welcome". Either you welcome everyone and focus on getting code to work, or you exclude based on licenses and reinvent the wheel. The question you need to ask is what is important for you. If the most important thing for the project is the license choice, then be upfront about the ideological choice that such goal is. If the goal is to get working code that will use any software you can legally use, then a more pragmatic approach is more suitable. I personally don't run operative system which focus more on the license rather than getting things done. My work also don't pay me for license choices, but they do for code that works and create value for the customers. I could put agpl code on the servers and you know what, no one would object.

morganvachon 9y ago

They are different, and that's fine. Personally I lean more towards the BSD/MIT style of licensing than GPL; I feel the former is "more free" from the developer's side because it doesn't tell her what she can't do with her code. The GPL forces the developer's hand (though in a way that benefits society as a whole), whereas BSD says "it's your code, do what you will". All of that said, the GPL is perhaps one of the most important parts of the modern software ecosystem; without it we wouldn't have Linux, and FOSS as we know it wouldn't exist. The world is a better place because of the GPL.

hannob 9y ago
The BSD/GPL question is independent of the free software / open source term. Both the OSI and the FSF accept GPL and BSD-style licenses. So both GPL and BSD code is free software and open source software.
- morganvachon 9y ago
  Are you sure about that? gnu.org has a huge beef with BSD, they are actively campaigning for any developer considering BSD to use GPL instead[1]. Basically, anything that is not 100% copyleft is considered non-Free by GNU and FSF. Again, that doesn't bother me; to each their own. I'm not a developer so you might say I have no skin in this issue. However, I stand by my assertion that BSD gives the lone developer more freedom at the expense of social needs, whereas the GPL takes freedom away from the lone developer but puts necessary power in the hands of society as a whole (the so-called "viral" aspect of GPL). Neither is "right" or "wrong", and I'm happy we have a choice at all. [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/bsd.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/bsd.en.html
  - hannob 9y ago
    > gnu.org has a huge beef with BSD, they are actively campaigning for any developer considering BSD to use GPL instead[1]. Basically, anything that is not 100% copyleft is considered non-Free by GNU and FSF. Not true. Just look here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html Plenty of BSD-ish licenses that are in the free software categories. The FSF's and GNU proejct's position is that they prefer GPL over BSD, but nowhere do they say BSDish licensed code is not free software.

jrochkind1 9y ago

So, there _is_ a difference. But it's _not_ true that open source (as defined by OSI) says "nothing" about the rights it gives users. It says something. "free software" says something else/more (which may or may not be a good thing, that's a value judgement). "free software" is indeed an (intentionally) confusing name meant to discredit "open source".

Phlogistique 9y ago
> "free software" is indeed an (intentionally) confusing name meant to discredit "open source". That's factually wrong. The word "free software" was invented before.
DonHopkins 9y ago
You've got the directions of the arrow of time and cause and effect backwards. "Free Software" and "Copyleft" came WAY first. "Open Software" came later, and was meant to intentionally and personally discredit RMS, "free software" and "Copyleft".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jrochkind1 9y ago
  OK, thanks for the correction. I still think it's important to note that a) they are NOT "the same" (as some people in the thread are saying), and b) "open source" as defined by OSI does NOT "say nothing about the rights it gives users" (as other people in the thread are saying). Neither are true.

pksadiq 9y ago

> The difference is merely a philosophical one NO. They can be very different practically. For example, your Android phone/router contains open source software pieces (and very likely have GPLv2 licensed code). You get the source code of those, but you may not be able to change them. So yes, they are open source, but not free software. Open source means the code is open, and you can do anything with the code (licensing restrictions implied). Free software extends that further to have freedom to run modified code on the same device[0] (See freedom 1 and its explanation: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish). This is a very important distinction between free software and open source software. This was one of the primary reasons why GNU GPLv3 was introduced. So in many occasions, open source != free software. [0]https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

nailer 9y ago
> You get the source code of those, but you may not be able to change them. Yes you can. See https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated : > 3. Derived Works > The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
- pksadiq 9y ago
  >> You get the source code of those, but you may not be able to change them. > Yes you can. See https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated Well. I have explained about that in the above comment. I'm not saying that you can't modify the source. But open source software don't require the user to be able to run the modified versions on the same device, free software do. So the same software can be both free software and open source or open source only based on where the code is run.
  - nailer 9y ago
    Where in The Free Software Definition https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html does it require the user to be able to run the modified versions on the same device?

fish_fan 9y ago

Err, this is the myth that keeps spreading mysteriously. There are absolutely massive differences between open source and free software. Why would you want to be open but not free unless you wanted to restrict the use of the code you “opened”.

digi_owl 9y ago
Not mysteriously at all. There is big money to be made by muddying this water.