5 ms·

Open Source is a term that is a fair bit younger than Free Software/Libre software. It was created so those who didn't like GPLed and similarly licensed softwar

Open Source is a term that is a fair bit younger than Free Software/Libre software. It was created so those who didn't like GPLed and similarly licensed software could easily talk about lightly licensed software (eg: BSD). Most of the people I run into in Seattle that are all psyched about Open Source are of the lawyer for BigCo type, or are personal zealots who have been diving down the rabbit hole and buy the ideology of "true freedom". Problem is, you don't create much of a virtuous cycle of improvement when there is no incentive to contribute back to upstream, or even post your fork online.

kemitchell 8y ago
> [Open Source] was created so those who didn't like GPLed and similarly licensed software could easily talk about lightly licensed software (eg: BSD). I'm afraid that's incorrect. The moniker "open source" was coined in working group leading up to the formation of the Open Source Initiative, as a rebranding of Free Software to industry, around the time of Netscape's software release. OSI published an "Open Source Definition" based directly on Debian's Free Software Guidelines, which explicitly set out to describe both permissive terms like BSD and copyleft terms like GPLv2. The OSD doesn't have an "Example Licenses" section, but DFSG still does: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2017/11/12/DFSG-versus-OSD.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2017/11/12/DFSG-versus-OSD.ht... Folks do commonly distinguish BSD- and GPL-style licenses, as you imply. The most popular lingo says "permissive" contra "copyleft". Lawrence Rosen's book popularized "academic" versus "reciprocal". We could also say "BSD school" and "FSF school".