4 ms·

It's not open source; the Hacker News headline is wrong. The Numworks web site does not claim it's open source, by the way -- the problem is only in the headli

by kfogel 8y ago

It's not open source; the Hacker News headline is wrong. The Numworks web site does not claim it's open source, by the way -- the problem is only in the headline here. The license is Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA), and the presence of the "NonCommercial" clause makes it unambiguously non-open-source. If that clause were not present, CC-BY-SA would still be an odd license to use for software anyway, but because of the NC clause we never get to that issue.

marmaduke 8y ago
Source appear to be on GitHub. Non commercial is not incompatible with open source. It makes sense to me that to get the investment required to fund this, you’d want sole rights to commercialize. Nothing prevents someone else from building a cheaper DIY version as long as they don’t sell it. For example it could be a local college class exercise to build these from scratch for local high school. That’s not imaginable for the TI calculators (which these seem to aim to replace)
- kfogel 8y ago
  Source being on GitHub does not equal "is open source". Restrictions on commercial use are incompatible with open source. The Open Source Initiative, which coined the term and evaluates licenses for compatibility with the Open Source Definition (see https://opensource.org/definition https://opensource.org/definition), is crystal clear on this point: if your license has a field-of-use restriction -- such as a restriction on commercial use -- then it's not open source. This is why Numworks is careful not to describe their software as "open source", to their credit.
  - PurpleRamen 8y ago
    It may not be "Free Source", but if the source is open in the sense if being accessable, then for normal people it is open source. One organization using words in a specific way, doesn't negate all other legit interpretations of those words. It's an unsolvable problem they created there.
    - cpks 8y ago
      Nope. Open Source is a trademark precisely to avoid this sort of misuse. It's not a "what it means to whomever" sort of deal. That was done in part due to intentional (and damaging, if ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to undermine the meaning of terms like 'Free Software' by Microsoft back when the FSF was a fledgling movement and Microsoft was an evil empire. I don't mean to imply negative things about the company. The license is still a heck of a lot better than fully proprietary -- I love the product in part for that reason -- but it's definitely not 'open source' or 'free software' as the headline implies. (I don't think the company claims it is either)
      - PurpleRamen 8y ago
        I'm talking about casual language-usage, like this headline, not commercial usage. Open and source are regular words, and they still are regular words when used together. Trademarks can't force people to talk as they want, it can only force company to not sell everything as they wish.
        kfogel 8y ago
        Yes, the term can't be trademarked, because they're both common English words used in combination (and that combination has a somewhat older, unrelated meaning, which further contributes to making the term untrademarkable). But this isn't a trademark issue. No one has trademarked the word "carrots" either, but if someone were to sell pencils under the label "carrots", people would be understandably confused and annoyed. It's the same thing here: don't call it open source if it's not. The software industry relies on that term having a specific, well-defined meaning. That meaning is widely agreed on, which, again, is why Numworks themselves is not claiming their stuff is open source.
      - MrBingley 8y ago
        That is incorrect. There is no trademark on "open source", and the OSI has no monopoly on what it is supposed to mean. https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.php https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
  - marmaduke 8y ago
    I didn’t say it’s open source, and I don’t agree that the NC clause is incompatible with the notion of open source. I don’t recognize the OSI as the sole authority on the subject but a useful legal framework, so all your argumentation about definitions is moot for me.
- foo101 8y ago
  > It makes sense to me that to get the investment required to fund this, you’d want sole rights to commercialize. It indeed does make sense to commercialize. Nobody said otherwise. But making good sense does not make a software open source. Releasing a software under an open source license makes a software open source. CC-BY-NC-SA is not such a license.
- JohnStrangeII 8y ago
  Whether it's still open source is a bit of a semantic quibble. Fact is that a restriction to non-commercial usage is incompatible with all the major open-source licences like GPL, LGPL, Appache, BSD, MIT, etc. In a sense it's still open source, but the restriction is very unusual.
  - kfogel 8y ago
    It's no more a "semantic quibble" than any other inaccurate use of a term is a semantic quibble. People are counting on headlines meaning what they say they mean, and this one doesn't. If the headline mistakenly said "Lisp-compatible" instead of "Python-compatible", you wouldn't say "Oh, that's just a semantic quibble", right? You'd say it's wrong, flat out. The programming language it's compatible with is Python, not Lisp, so saying Lisp would just be inaccurate. (And they're both English words -- neither term is trademarked, obviously, and they both have meanings unrelated to their meanings in the realm of programming languages.) Saying this is "open source" is wrong in exactly the same sense. The term has a settled meaning in the software world. The reason "non-commercial usage is incompatible with all the major open-source licenses", as you say, is that it is by definition incompatible with all open source licenses. Because "open source" means freedom for use for any purpose, including commercial purposes. This is not merely a semantic quibble any more than any other wrong use of a word is a semantic quibble. It's wrong in the normal way that language usage can be wrong.
dbcurtis 8y ago
Please explain. NC only prohibits commercial exploitation, correct?
- kfogel 8y ago
  That's right. And prohibiting commercial exploitation violates one of the key clauses of both the Open Source Definition and the Free Software Definition (the part about freedom of use for any purpose). See https://opensource.org/faq#commercial https://opensource.org/faq#commercial. In other words "open source" doesn't just mean "you can see the source code" (that's known as "visible source" or "source available" software). Rather, "open source" means "meets the Open Source Definition", which is at https://opensource.org/definition https://opensource.org/definition.
  - dbcurtis 8y ago
    so the GPL is not open source?
    - kfogel 8y ago
      The GPL allows all commercial use. It does not allow proprietary restrictions on redistribution, under certain circumstances, but that's different. You can charge as much money as you want for GPL'd software, and you can base your commercial service on GPL'd software, etc (by the way, this is not just hypothetical -- billions of dollars of commercial activity are based on GPL'd software, including but not limited to the Linux kernel). It's just that when someone receives a copy of GPL'd software from you, you can't place further restrictions on their redistribution -- the permission to redistribute under the GPL comes with the copies. Think of it this way: the GPL prevents monopoly, while permitting commercial use.
- susam 8y ago
  CC BY-NC-SA does not permit the use of the software for commercial purposes. This violates point 6 of the Open Source Definition[OSD] that says, "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor: The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research." [OSD]: https://opensource.org/docs/osd https://opensource.org/docs/osd
mehrdadn 8y ago
Instead of asserting the title is wrong, it would make sense to recognize that the title is correct, and that the discrepancy with your beliefs is simply a result of the fact that plenty of other people do not, in fact, take OSI's opinions as facts like you do.
- foo101 8y ago
  The title is indeed wrong. There is no definition or usage of the word "open source" that is compatible with restriction of commercial usage. Never in the history of free software or open source software from the release of Donald Knuth's TeX in 1979, to the birth of FSF in 1985, or the formalization of OSD in 1998 was it ever acceptable to forbid commercial usage in something that is known as open source. The corruption of the word "open source" to mean anything with source code available on GitHub under a non-commercial license is very recent and does not reflect the true origin or meaning of the word "open source". The implication that CC-BY-NC-SA could be open source seems to be your belief which is not based on facts.
  - cpks 8y ago
    To be fair, the "true origin" story is a little misleading. A bunch of douchebags wanted credit for Stallman's work and basically threw an underhanded hissy-cow to try to undermine him to co-opt his position. There was a pile of exaggerated (or often fabricated) stories thrown at the FSF. Commercial players came in to support the attack with a whole range of motives -- from wanting something more corporate to an "arm both sides" mentality to undercut the movement. While I agree with your point, I'm not sure the alleged history supports it very well. It's a pretty ugly piece of the movement's history. Now, that was two decades ago, those people are gone, and OSI is a very nice, good, and friendly organization today.
  - MrBingley 8y ago
    This sounds a bit like the No True Scotsman fallacy. There is no official definition of "open source", so taking what the words literally mean, "open" and "source", ie the source code is open to view, is an acceptable definition.
- 8y ago

by kfogel 8y ago

marmaduke 8y ago

Source appear to be on GitHub. Non commercial is not incompatible with open source. It makes sense to me that to get the investment required to fund this, you’d want sole rights to commercialize. Nothing prevents someone else from building a cheaper DIY version as long as they don’t sell it. For example it could be a local college class exercise to build these from scratch for local high school. That’s not imaginable for the TI calculators (which these seem to aim to replace)

kfogel 8y ago
Source being on GitHub does not equal "is open source". Restrictions on commercial use are incompatible with open source. The Open Source Initiative, which coined the term and evaluates licenses for compatibility with the Open Source Definition (see https://opensource.org/definition https://opensource.org/definition), is crystal clear on this point: if your license has a field-of-use restriction -- such as a restriction on commercial use -- then it's not open source. This is why Numworks is careful not to describe their software as "open source", to their credit.
- PurpleRamen 8y ago
  It may not be "Free Source", but if the source is open in the sense if being accessable, then for normal people it is open source. One organization using words in a specific way, doesn't negate all other legit interpretations of those words. It's an unsolvable problem they created there.
  - cpks 8y ago
    Nope. Open Source is a trademark precisely to avoid this sort of misuse. It's not a "what it means to whomever" sort of deal. That was done in part due to intentional (and damaging, if ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to undermine the meaning of terms like 'Free Software' by Microsoft back when the FSF was a fledgling movement and Microsoft was an evil empire. I don't mean to imply negative things about the company. The license is still a heck of a lot better than fully proprietary -- I love the product in part for that reason -- but it's definitely not 'open source' or 'free software' as the headline implies. (I don't think the company claims it is either)
    - PurpleRamen 8y ago
      I'm talking about casual language-usage, like this headline, not commercial usage. Open and source are regular words, and they still are regular words when used together. Trademarks can't force people to talk as they want, it can only force company to not sell everything as they wish.
      - kfogel 8y ago
        Yes, the term can't be trademarked, because they're both common English words used in combination (and that combination has a somewhat older, unrelated meaning, which further contributes to making the term untrademarkable). But this isn't a trademark issue. No one has trademarked the word "carrots" either, but if someone were to sell pencils under the label "carrots", people would be understandably confused and annoyed. It's the same thing here: don't call it open source if it's not. The software industry relies on that term having a specific, well-defined meaning. That meaning is widely agreed on, which, again, is why Numworks themselves is not claiming their stuff is open source.
    - MrBingley 8y ago
      That is incorrect. There is no trademark on "open source", and the OSI has no monopoly on what it is supposed to mean. https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.php https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
- marmaduke 8y ago
  I didn’t say it’s open source, and I don’t agree that the NC clause is incompatible with the notion of open source. I don’t recognize the OSI as the sole authority on the subject but a useful legal framework, so all your argumentation about definitions is moot for me.
foo101 8y ago
> It makes sense to me that to get the investment required to fund this, you’d want sole rights to commercialize. It indeed does make sense to commercialize. Nobody said otherwise. But making good sense does not make a software open source. Releasing a software under an open source license makes a software open source. CC-BY-NC-SA is not such a license.
JohnStrangeII 8y ago
Whether it's still open source is a bit of a semantic quibble. Fact is that a restriction to non-commercial usage is incompatible with all the major open-source licences like GPL, LGPL, Appache, BSD, MIT, etc. In a sense it's still open source, but the restriction is very unusual.
- kfogel 8y ago
  It's no more a "semantic quibble" than any other inaccurate use of a term is a semantic quibble. People are counting on headlines meaning what they say they mean, and this one doesn't. If the headline mistakenly said "Lisp-compatible" instead of "Python-compatible", you wouldn't say "Oh, that's just a semantic quibble", right? You'd say it's wrong, flat out. The programming language it's compatible with is Python, not Lisp, so saying Lisp would just be inaccurate. (And they're both English words -- neither term is trademarked, obviously, and they both have meanings unrelated to their meanings in the realm of programming languages.) Saying this is "open source" is wrong in exactly the same sense. The term has a settled meaning in the software world. The reason "non-commercial usage is incompatible with all the major open-source licenses", as you say, is that it is by definition incompatible with all open source licenses. Because "open source" means freedom for use for any purpose, including commercial purposes. This is not merely a semantic quibble any more than any other wrong use of a word is a semantic quibble. It's wrong in the normal way that language usage can be wrong.

dbcurtis 8y ago

Please explain. NC only prohibits commercial exploitation, correct?

kfogel 8y ago
That's right. And prohibiting commercial exploitation violates one of the key clauses of both the Open Source Definition and the Free Software Definition (the part about freedom of use for any purpose). See https://opensource.org/faq#commercial https://opensource.org/faq#commercial. In other words "open source" doesn't just mean "you can see the source code" (that's known as "visible source" or "source available" software). Rather, "open source" means "meets the Open Source Definition", which is at https://opensource.org/definition https://opensource.org/definition.
- dbcurtis 8y ago
  so the GPL is not open source?
  - kfogel 8y ago
    The GPL allows all commercial use. It does not allow proprietary restrictions on redistribution, under certain circumstances, but that's different. You can charge as much money as you want for GPL'd software, and you can base your commercial service on GPL'd software, etc (by the way, this is not just hypothetical -- billions of dollars of commercial activity are based on GPL'd software, including but not limited to the Linux kernel). It's just that when someone receives a copy of GPL'd software from you, you can't place further restrictions on their redistribution -- the permission to redistribute under the GPL comes with the copies. Think of it this way: the GPL prevents monopoly, while permitting commercial use.
susam 8y ago
CC BY-NC-SA does not permit the use of the software for commercial purposes. This violates point 6 of the Open Source Definition[OSD] that says, "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor: The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research." [OSD]: https://opensource.org/docs/osd https://opensource.org/docs/osd

mehrdadn 8y ago

Instead of asserting the title is wrong, it would make sense to recognize that the title is correct, and that the discrepancy with your beliefs is simply a result of the fact that plenty of other people do not, in fact, take OSI's opinions as facts like you do.

foo101 8y ago
The title is indeed wrong. There is no definition or usage of the word "open source" that is compatible with restriction of commercial usage. Never in the history of free software or open source software from the release of Donald Knuth's TeX in 1979, to the birth of FSF in 1985, or the formalization of OSD in 1998 was it ever acceptable to forbid commercial usage in something that is known as open source. The corruption of the word "open source" to mean anything with source code available on GitHub under a non-commercial license is very recent and does not reflect the true origin or meaning of the word "open source". The implication that CC-BY-NC-SA could be open source seems to be your belief which is not based on facts.
- cpks 8y ago
  To be fair, the "true origin" story is a little misleading. A bunch of douchebags wanted credit for Stallman's work and basically threw an underhanded hissy-cow to try to undermine him to co-opt his position. There was a pile of exaggerated (or often fabricated) stories thrown at the FSF. Commercial players came in to support the attack with a whole range of motives -- from wanting something more corporate to an "arm both sides" mentality to undercut the movement. While I agree with your point, I'm not sure the alleged history supports it very well. It's a pretty ugly piece of the movement's history. Now, that was two decades ago, those people are gone, and OSI is a very nice, good, and friendly organization today.
- MrBingley 8y ago
  This sounds a bit like the No True Scotsman fallacy. There is no official definition of "open source", so taking what the words literally mean, "open" and "source", ie the source code is open to view, is an acceptable definition.
8y ago