5 ms·

You mean open source yes, free software no.

• skybrian 7y ago
  No, it's not "open source" unless it has a license that meets the open source definition [1]. "Source-available" is the right term for this sort of thing. [1] https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
  • hoseja 7y ago
    So it's not Open Source™, as defined by The Open Source Initiative. I'll still call it open source as there is source in the open that doesn't seem leaked maliciously.
    • CobrastanJorji 7y ago
      Calling it that could be parsed in a way that would be technically true, but it would be intentionally obtuse, in the same way that a cowboy who rides off on a horse named Tuesday could be described as having "left on Tuesday," or a malware author fond of white fedoras might be described as a "white hat hacker." "Open source" has been understood to mean "freely redistributable and modifiable" source for a couple of decades now, and if you used it to mean something else without clarifying, you should expect that they will misunderstand you.
      • tingletech 7y ago
        > "Open source" has been understood to mean "freely redistributable and modifiable" source for a couple of decades now I don't know if this is true universally, or only in certain communities.
        • jchw 7y ago
          Only certain communities. Such as... the general open source community. And maybe even software developers in general. I can definitely see this being misunderstood by end users or others because licensing and the related terminology is just plain confusing, but as long as I can remember it was very clear that there's a difference between shared source, 'available' source, and open source. The same exact arguments can be made about free software, only worse because colloquially users have traditionally confused it with the term freeware.
          • kragen 7y ago
            Right, one of the strong arguments in favor of the term was that “open source” had no pre-existing meaning to constantly struggle against. Thus my frustration with the persistent confusion, where by “confusion” I mean “con men falsely claiming that their software is open-source in order to free-ride on the goodwill the open-source community has earned through decades of hard work and persistence against impossible odds in order to guarantee basic human rights to everyone in an increasingly computer-mediated world.”
    • ramses0 7y ago
      No, it is “source available”. It’s the difference between UFC and MMA, or declaring that addition == subtraction (if only you negate all the terms). If you don’t use the term correctly, then you’re muddying the waters. Source Available - unknown license Free Software - no cost, may or may not have source available Open Source - OSI approved, there exists an automatic license to at least use or redistribute the code unmodified
      • caf 7y ago
        Free Software doesn't mean no cost, it means software where "the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software". Two commonly used definitions are the Debian Free Sotware Guidelines (https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines) and the FSF's Free Software Definition (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html).
        • jfk13 7y ago
          Nicely demonstrating that just as "open source" is open to multiple interpretations, so is "free software". Within certain communities, there are widely-accepted definitions (from OSI, FSF, Debian, etc) but not everyone automatically understands the terms according to these definitions.
          • vageli 7y ago
            > Nicely demonstrating that just as "open source" is open to multiple interpretations, so is "free software". Within certain communities, there are widely-accepted definitions (from OSI, FSF, Debian, etc) but not everyone automatically understands the terms according to these definitions. At least for "free", it (used to be?) very common to add an "as in" after, like "free as in beer" (you don't have to pay) or "free as in speech" (you can do what you want with it).
          • kragen 7y ago
            Those three definitions are so similar that when they disagree it's usually because someone is misinterpreting something. The key disagreements between Debian and the FSF are about invariant sections in documentation and the mere existence of Debian’s non-free category, which it explicitly doesn't claim is free software.
    • nguoi 7y ago
      >source in the open That's not a normal sentence construction though, it sounds tortured. You may be able to see through my windows into my home: that doesn't mean my home is open to you.
  • sdegutis 7y ago
    The obvious common sense definition of "open source" is "I can see the source." This is probably what everyone in this thread automatically thought of, except those to whom the agenda of the Open Source Initiative is of extreme importance and who thus have memorized their definition.
    • skybrian 7y ago
      I don't think anyone has memorized it, but everyone who was around when "open source" was first introduced and we debated it to death (compared to "free software") knows that the source being available isn't enough.
• kragen 7y ago
  Where are these people coming from? We were perfectly clear when we invented the term "open source" that we meant "free software", to the point of adapting the Debian Free Software Guidelines into the explicit and detailed Open Source Definition, and we've been using the term consistently for over 20 years. Where is the roach nest that keeps sending forth these would-be free-riders on the goodwill attached to the term "open source", who keep trying to falsely pass off their proprietary crud as "open source", and how can we exterminate them? (Not, of course, BootOS; it never claims to be open-source.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
  • skybrian 7y ago
    I assume it's mostly due to misunderstanding. It's been a long time since the open source definition was adopted and we're seeing more and more people now who don't know the history. People who have been using a term their whole lives might not have any idea where it came from, or that it even has an official definition.
    • kragen 7y ago
      But where does the misunderstanding come from? Where are they getting the fraudster definition from? Do they see threads like this and think “I should be like that guy who has all those people yelling at him that he's wrong,” or is there some reservoir of memetic infection out there where this kind of thing goes unchallenged?
      • smallnamespace 7y ago
        It's right there in the words of the term - it's not an unreasonable guess to think that 'open source' just means that the source code is 'open' in the sense of 'available', especially since proprietary software doesn't normally provide source code. Compound this by the fact that many people are jumping into this field where English is not their first (or even second) language.
      • MrEldritch 7y ago
• zaarn 7y ago
  Generally, software like this is called "source available", not "Open source".