7 ms·

I'm aware of the OSD. I'm referring to open source in the sense of the source code being made available.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest. Given how every Reddit/HN thread I come across has an argument on whether it is appropriate to use open source in this context, I strongly disagree with the phrase "most people". In my experience, most people call it open source, and it only misleads the minority that insists on owning the definition of the phrase.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    There is a loud minority of people who disagree, mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner. The term "open source" is a trademark of the Open Source Initiative and has a clear, unambiguous meaning.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Unfortunately, no, the OSI could never get a trademark on "open source".
      - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
        Ah, pity.
    - BeetleB 8y ago
      >There is a loud minority of people who disagree The minority is those who insist on the OSI definition as the only appropriate way to use "open source". >mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner. The problem I'm seeing is the labeling of people who disagree about a single point (terminology) as bad actors (i.e. people who are bent on "exploiting"). As I mentioned in another comment, this is sadly a common path that ideological movements take - attributing intentions to others, and focusing on rooting out impure adherents.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
        >The minority is those who insist on the OSI definition as the only appropriate way to use "open source". No, it's not. I actually ran a poll on my Mastodon account last night: https://www.strawpoll.me/16741426/r https://www.strawpoll.me/16741426/r I followed up with many of the "something else" folks and most of the people I spoke to said that they were confused by the premise because free/open source are different things, and one had a strange and political definition of open source as "software which helps people", and none of them agreed that the Commons Clause qualified. >The problem I'm seeing is the labeling of people who disagree about a single point (terminology) as bad actors (i.e. people who are bent on "exploiting"). These people might not be bad actors or have bad intent from the start. But if, upon being corrected, they don't change their course, then they are bad actors. They prey on people who don't understand software licensing, and who only know that open source is "good".
        staticassertion 8y ago
        That poll seems extremely biased by the fact that they're your followers. Beyond that, your answers are leading, and don't include the proposed "Source availability". When you put a poll this way its obvious that people will choose specific answers.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    How far we've come. I remember back in 2001, when Reddit and HN didn't exist yet, and the whole Internet was caught up in a seemingly unanimous furor about how, not only were most of Microsoft's just-released Shared Source licenses not open source, but even the ones like MS-PL that met the OSI definition still weren't open source simply because they had Shared Source cooties on them by virtue of being announced at the same time. I fear that the bad old days were so far back now that people no longer remember why this stuff is important.
    - BeetleB 8y ago
      What you're describing is to be expected. In 2001, the percentage of people on the Internet that were tech geeks and aware of OSI and GNU was much higher than today, and so they could more easily control the narrative. Today they are in the minority. I've seen this in many activist communities. They (likely unintentionally) pick regular language to mean something very specific, and then spend endless amounts of time arguing that everyone else is using their terminology incorrectly. It's a huge waste of time. The rational thing to do is give your concepts unambiguous names - not ones where the majority that speak the English language could take to mean something else. >I fear that the bad old days were so far back now that people no longer remember why this stuff is important. Lumping those who disagree with your terminology with people who disagree with your philosophy isn't going to help the cause either. It alienates allies. In my experience, people by and large agree that it is important and are favorable with it. They merely disagree with the terminology. And that's the other thing that happens with ideological movements. As they grow, many fall into a local optimum where the focus is on purity. Who amongst us is pure enough to be in our circle? We'll keep devising ways to root them out (insistence on poor terminology being one way).
  - caboteria 8y ago
    I'll let the official Commons Clause website speak for me. https://commonsclause.com/ https://commonsclause.com/ > Is this “Open Source”? No.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    The reddit/HN arguments about the definition of "open source" pop up specifically because there are people stubbornly insisting upon subverting the definition of "open source" to mean something other than its official and formal and well-established definition per the OSI. If the license does not meet the OSI's definition of "open source", then it is not open source. If the license does not meet the FSF's definition of "free software", then is it not free software. Case closed. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. These organizations have existed for decades, and the definitions they have formalized for their respective terminologies have in turn existed for decades. The meanings of "open source" and "free software" are perfectly clear, and the sorts of licenses being discussed - like those using the Commons Clause - are very clearly neither open source nor free software by those very same well-established-for-decades definitions.
Flimm 8y ago
There is only one commonly accepted definition of open source. Just making the source code available is not enough, you also have to grant the right to be able to use the software for commercial purposes, etc. See: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated
- hoaw 8y ago
  The whole point of the license is presumably that they disagree with that definition. As far as I know a license can be OSI approved without containing patent grants, effectively making the code unusable for commercial purposes. There is also, again as far as I know, nothing stopping companies from using contracts to restrict the use of code in at least some OSI approved licenses. That said, I do think they should state that it is "non-commercial open source".
  - icebraining 8y ago
    A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. You're free to use another definition for the same term, but if you don't make it extremely clear to you're departing from the most commonly used, don't be surprised if people treat you as any other sleazy salesperson. The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as so. Unlike software copyright, software patents are not even valid in many countries.
    - hoaw 8y ago
      > A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. How open something has to be, to be called open source is a matter of opinion, so is to some degree what open means in the context of open source. Otherwise they would have to call it "unconditional open source" but then a number of, if not most, licenses wouldn't qualify. > The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as so. It isn't a red herring. I use it as an example to show that the openness in OSI approved licenses aren't absolute. Some licenses have other terms. They might for instance retain the moral rights of the author, try to avoid any liability or condition the distribution of software. If you can have those exceptions and still be considered open source I don't see an objective reason why you can't call software where the economic rights are retained open source as well (even though I can understand why people wouldn't want that).

The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest.

BeetleB 8y ago
>The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest. Given how every Reddit/HN thread I come across has an argument on whether it is appropriate to use open source in this context, I strongly disagree with the phrase "most people". In my experience, most people call it open source, and it only misleads the minority that insists on owning the definition of the phrase.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  There is a loud minority of people who disagree, mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner. The term "open source" is a trademark of the Open Source Initiative and has a clear, unambiguous meaning.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Unfortunately, no, the OSI could never get a trademark on "open source".
    - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
      Ah, pity.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    >There is a loud minority of people who disagree The minority is those who insist on the OSI definition as the only appropriate way to use "open source". >mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner. The problem I'm seeing is the labeling of people who disagree about a single point (terminology) as bad actors (i.e. people who are bent on "exploiting"). As I mentioned in another comment, this is sadly a common path that ideological movements take - attributing intentions to others, and focusing on rooting out impure adherents.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
      >The minority is those who insist on the OSI definition as the only appropriate way to use "open source". No, it's not. I actually ran a poll on my Mastodon account last night: https://www.strawpoll.me/16741426/r https://www.strawpoll.me/16741426/r I followed up with many of the "something else" folks and most of the people I spoke to said that they were confused by the premise because free/open source are different things, and one had a strange and political definition of open source as "software which helps people", and none of them agreed that the Commons Clause qualified. >The problem I'm seeing is the labeling of people who disagree about a single point (terminology) as bad actors (i.e. people who are bent on "exploiting"). These people might not be bad actors or have bad intent from the start. But if, upon being corrected, they don't change their course, then they are bad actors. They prey on people who don't understand software licensing, and who only know that open source is "good".
      - staticassertion 8y ago
        That poll seems extremely biased by the fact that they're your followers. Beyond that, your answers are leading, and don't include the proposed "Source availability". When you put a poll this way its obvious that people will choose specific answers.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  How far we've come. I remember back in 2001, when Reddit and HN didn't exist yet, and the whole Internet was caught up in a seemingly unanimous furor about how, not only were most of Microsoft's just-released Shared Source licenses not open source, but even the ones like MS-PL that met the OSI definition still weren't open source simply because they had Shared Source cooties on them by virtue of being announced at the same time. I fear that the bad old days were so far back now that people no longer remember why this stuff is important.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    What you're describing is to be expected. In 2001, the percentage of people on the Internet that were tech geeks and aware of OSI and GNU was much higher than today, and so they could more easily control the narrative. Today they are in the minority. I've seen this in many activist communities. They (likely unintentionally) pick regular language to mean something very specific, and then spend endless amounts of time arguing that everyone else is using their terminology incorrectly. It's a huge waste of time. The rational thing to do is give your concepts unambiguous names - not ones where the majority that speak the English language could take to mean something else. >I fear that the bad old days were so far back now that people no longer remember why this stuff is important. Lumping those who disagree with your terminology with people who disagree with your philosophy isn't going to help the cause either. It alienates allies. In my experience, people by and large agree that it is important and are favorable with it. They merely disagree with the terminology. And that's the other thing that happens with ideological movements. As they grow, many fall into a local optimum where the focus is on purity. Who amongst us is pure enough to be in our circle? We'll keep devising ways to root them out (insistence on poor terminology being one way).
- caboteria 8y ago
  I'll let the official Commons Clause website speak for me. https://commonsclause.com/ https://commonsclause.com/ > Is this “Open Source”? No.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  The reddit/HN arguments about the definition of "open source" pop up specifically because there are people stubbornly insisting upon subverting the definition of "open source" to mean something other than its official and formal and well-established definition per the OSI. If the license does not meet the OSI's definition of "open source", then it is not open source. If the license does not meet the FSF's definition of "free software", then is it not free software. Case closed. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. These organizations have existed for decades, and the definitions they have formalized for their respective terminologies have in turn existed for decades. The meanings of "open source" and "free software" are perfectly clear, and the sorts of licenses being discussed - like those using the Commons Clause - are very clearly neither open source nor free software by those very same well-established-for-decades definitions.

Flimm 8y ago

There is only one commonly accepted definition of open source. Just making the source code available is not enough, you also have to grant the right to be able to use the software for commercial purposes, etc. See: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

hoaw 8y ago
The whole point of the license is presumably that they disagree with that definition. As far as I know a license can be OSI approved without containing patent grants, effectively making the code unusable for commercial purposes. There is also, again as far as I know, nothing stopping companies from using contracts to restrict the use of code in at least some OSI approved licenses. That said, I do think they should state that it is "non-commercial open source".
- icebraining 8y ago
  A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. You're free to use another definition for the same term, but if you don't make it extremely clear to you're departing from the most commonly used, don't be surprised if people treat you as any other sleazy salesperson. The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as so. Unlike software copyright, software patents are not even valid in many countries.
  - hoaw 8y ago
    > A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. How open something has to be, to be called open source is a matter of opinion, so is to some degree what open means in the context of open source. Otherwise they would have to call it "unconditional open source" but then a number of, if not most, licenses wouldn't qualify. > The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as so. It isn't a red herring. I use it as an example to show that the openness in OSI approved licenses aren't absolute. Some licenses have other terms. They might for instance retain the moral rights of the author, try to avoid any liability or condition the distribution of software. If you can have those exceptions and still be considered open source I don't see an objective reason why you can't call software where the economic rights are retained open source as well (even though I can understand why people wouldn't want that).