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I don't feel like we're going to make any progress in this space while a single entity is considered the sole authorizer of something being open source or not.

geofft 6y ago
It's not - there are two entities (FSF and OSI), they happen to have similar definitions, and a number of important organizations (Linux distros, vendors with special plans for open-source users, employers with open-source contribution policies, etc.) all happen to have specified their definition in terms of one or both of those because they're pretty good definitions. For instance, Ubuntu's licensing policy has text that pretty closely matches the OSD's, but does not defer to the OSI for the definition. (And Debian's, of course, is the text on which the OSD was based - any changes to the OSI-maintained OSD would not necessarily flow back to the DFSG. Debian also considers some of the FSF's own licenses non-free, for good reason IMO.) Concretely, if the OSI were to change the OSD in either a way that included things like the SSPL or that included things like the Hippocratic License, I think there's a good chance that my employer's internal OSS policies would change to say "the version of the OSD before 2020," because it's not clearly in their interest to contribute company-owned code to projects under those licenses. On similar grounds, I'd expect companies that provide free services (hosting, CI, etc.) to F/OSS projects to say "these licenses don't count," Linux distros to not universally agree on including them, etc. So you're already in a place where there's no sole authority: you need to start by convincing everyone other than the OSI that a new sort of license is actually a good idea and the change you want to make to the OSD is actually something that they, too, should consider "open source." And once you get to the point where enough people agree with you, the OSI isn't going to be in your way in any practical sense.
- notRobot 6y ago
  > Debian also considers some of the FSF's own licenses non-free, for good reason IMO. I'm curious about this, do you know which ones?
  - duskwuff 6y ago
    The GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). It's generally well-intentioned, but it places some weird restrictions on modification and reuse. In particular, it allows the author of a text to define "invariant" sections of a text which cannot be removed or altered in copies of the work, and automatically applies this restriction to sections of a document with certain names (like "Dedication"). The GFDL also theoretically forbids users from storing GFDL-licensed documents on encrypted storage, as the license states that "You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute". I don't think that reading was intended, but the license doesn't clarify further. :) Further analysis: https://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml https://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I would say, by and large, every conversation about a new license is near immediate dismissal because the OSI hasn't approved it. The conversation that should happen rarely does because the OSI has decided they have no desire or need to make open source development sustainable.
cycloptic 6y ago
I don't feel like we're going to make any progress either if we consider it open source to toss random code up on github under random licenses with no legal review from any outside parties whatsoever. Sorry I don't mean to be snarky but someone has to fund the lawyers and organize the committees to look over this stuff and it seems those orgs are the only ones willing to foot the bills so far. The groups pushing for newer licenses that skirt the existing definitions almost never seem to be interested in doing this, they only really care about getting someone to bend the rules for their license.
pessimizer 6y ago
"Open Source" is an arbitrary label assigned to licenses accepted by the OSI as "Open Source," just like "Free Software" is an arbitrary label assigned to licenses accepted by the FSF as "Free Software." Accepting other definitions as "Open Source" is just like accepting other definitions of meters and grams. It's also piggybacking. You don't need to be Open Source, you can be something else. You don't have to use the word "open" to mean "available, and can be used under these conditions." It's not a standard usage. "Open" normally means that something can be passed through something else i.e. that something else is not blocked, or that it is currently doing business. People calling their own licenses "open source" when they're not approved is a way to attempt to trade on the reputation and regard established by licenses that were written or approved by the OSI. That reputation and regard is a result of the consistent standards that OSI have applied to the license language that they approve. The cases for calling explicitly unapproved licenses "open source" are no more coherent than a hypothetical argument about how we can't let a group of four unelected people, half of them dead and the other half very old and deeply embedded in the industry, decide what bands can be called The Beatles.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  It's insane to me that people can argue the OSI owns the phrase "open source" or that the FSF owns the phrase "free software". In the current scenario, where the OSI has flatly failed to act to do anything necessary to protect open source as a workable concept, at what point can we decide that they aren't adequate stewards of the term?
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    This question comes up fairly often on HN and I'll paraphrase what I've said before. I could see some other group becoming an adequate steward of the term when the larger open source community agrees with their changes, and they do a re-review of all the existing OSI licenses to ensure they meet the new definition and are compatible with whatever the new incoming licenses are. This will probably involve lots of community outreach and paying lawyers to do it over some years. I'm not sure what else you would expect to happen -- forking the entire community over a legal nit pick is going to be just as expensive as forking a software project. When you say it's not a workable concept, without context it's very hard for me to interpret this in any way besides the usual "open source doesn't let us make profits off of keeping the source code restricted and/or secret" or "open source doesn't let me deny access to my competitors or personal enemies" which are kind of the entire point. Please fill me in if I'm not doing a charitable interpretation.
arp242 6y ago
HN: "Facebook, Google, and other Big Corp being gatekeepers is censorship and horrible!" Also HN: "The OSI is the One True arbiter of the term 'Open Source' and anyone who uses it in a way that disagrees with the OSI is dishonest and trying to cheat you!" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- cycloptic 6y ago
  If what you want is a situation where anyone can just call anything open source and individual users have to manually re-check all the licensing for any given project that gets posted to HN to make sure it doesn't add additional restrictions or conflict with the common MIT/BSD/GPL, I'm pretty sure that's already happening. There isn't any big corp gatekeeping -- they don't care if the community gets stuck dealing with fallout from these new licenses because that means they didn't have to pay the legal costs to get it tested in court. And in the meantime if the big corp really wants to be a customer they'll just ask to buy a standard proprietary license because it's cheaper and doesn't involve legal.

geofft 6y ago

It's not - there are two entities (FSF and OSI), they happen to have similar definitions, and a number of important organizations (Linux distros, vendors with special plans for open-source users, employers with open-source contribution policies, etc.) all happen to have specified their definition in terms of one or both of those because they're pretty good definitions. For instance, Ubuntu's licensing policy has text that pretty closely matches the OSD's, but does not defer to the OSI for the definition. (And Debian's, of course, is the text on which the OSD was based - any changes to the OSI-maintained OSD would not necessarily flow back to the DFSG. Debian also considers some of the FSF's own licenses non-free, for good reason IMO.) Concretely, if the OSI were to change the OSD in either a way that included things like the SSPL or that included things like the Hippocratic License, I think there's a good chance that my employer's internal OSS policies would change to say "the version of the OSD before 2020," because it's not clearly in their interest to contribute company-owned code to projects under those licenses. On similar grounds, I'd expect companies that provide free services (hosting, CI, etc.) to F/OSS projects to say "these licenses don't count," Linux distros to not universally agree on including them, etc. So you're already in a place where there's no sole authority: you need to start by convincing everyone other than the OSI that a new sort of license is actually a good idea and the change you want to make to the OSD is actually something that they, too, should consider "open source." And once you get to the point where enough people agree with you, the OSI isn't going to be in your way in any practical sense.

notRobot 6y ago
> Debian also considers some of the FSF's own licenses non-free, for good reason IMO. I'm curious about this, do you know which ones?
- duskwuff 6y ago
  The GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). It's generally well-intentioned, but it places some weird restrictions on modification and reuse. In particular, it allows the author of a text to define "invariant" sections of a text which cannot be removed or altered in copies of the work, and automatically applies this restriction to sections of a document with certain names (like "Dedication"). The GFDL also theoretically forbids users from storing GFDL-licensed documents on encrypted storage, as the license states that "You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute". I don't think that reading was intended, but the license doesn't clarify further. :) Further analysis: https://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml https://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I would say, by and large, every conversation about a new license is near immediate dismissal because the OSI hasn't approved it. The conversation that should happen rarely does because the OSI has decided they have no desire or need to make open source development sustainable.

cycloptic 6y ago

I don't feel like we're going to make any progress either if we consider it open source to toss random code up on github under random licenses with no legal review from any outside parties whatsoever. Sorry I don't mean to be snarky but someone has to fund the lawyers and organize the committees to look over this stuff and it seems those orgs are the only ones willing to foot the bills so far. The groups pushing for newer licenses that skirt the existing definitions almost never seem to be interested in doing this, they only really care about getting someone to bend the rules for their license.

pessimizer 6y ago

"Open Source" is an arbitrary label assigned to licenses accepted by the OSI as "Open Source," just like "Free Software" is an arbitrary label assigned to licenses accepted by the FSF as "Free Software." Accepting other definitions as "Open Source" is just like accepting other definitions of meters and grams. It's also piggybacking. You don't need to be Open Source, you can be something else. You don't have to use the word "open" to mean "available, and can be used under these conditions." It's not a standard usage. "Open" normally means that something can be passed through something else i.e. that something else is not blocked, or that it is currently doing business. People calling their own licenses "open source" when they're not approved is a way to attempt to trade on the reputation and regard established by licenses that were written or approved by the OSI. That reputation and regard is a result of the consistent standards that OSI have applied to the license language that they approve. The cases for calling explicitly unapproved licenses "open source" are no more coherent than a hypothetical argument about how we can't let a group of four unelected people, half of them dead and the other half very old and deeply embedded in the industry, decide what bands can be called The Beatles.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
It's insane to me that people can argue the OSI owns the phrase "open source" or that the FSF owns the phrase "free software". In the current scenario, where the OSI has flatly failed to act to do anything necessary to protect open source as a workable concept, at what point can we decide that they aren't adequate stewards of the term?
- cycloptic 6y ago
  This question comes up fairly often on HN and I'll paraphrase what I've said before. I could see some other group becoming an adequate steward of the term when the larger open source community agrees with their changes, and they do a re-review of all the existing OSI licenses to ensure they meet the new definition and are compatible with whatever the new incoming licenses are. This will probably involve lots of community outreach and paying lawyers to do it over some years. I'm not sure what else you would expect to happen -- forking the entire community over a legal nit pick is going to be just as expensive as forking a software project. When you say it's not a workable concept, without context it's very hard for me to interpret this in any way besides the usual "open source doesn't let us make profits off of keeping the source code restricted and/or secret" or "open source doesn't let me deny access to my competitors or personal enemies" which are kind of the entire point. Please fill me in if I'm not doing a charitable interpretation.

arp242 6y ago

HN: "Facebook, Google, and other Big Corp being gatekeepers is censorship and horrible!" Also HN: "The OSI is the One True arbiter of the term 'Open Source' and anyone who uses it in a way that disagrees with the OSI is dishonest and trying to cheat you!" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

cycloptic 6y ago
If what you want is a situation where anyone can just call anything open source and individual users have to manually re-check all the licensing for any given project that gets posted to HN to make sure it doesn't add additional restrictions or conflict with the common MIT/BSD/GPL, I'm pretty sure that's already happening. There isn't any big corp gatekeeping -- they don't care if the community gets stuck dealing with fallout from these new licenses because that means they didn't have to pay the legal costs to get it tested in court. And in the meantime if the big corp really wants to be a customer they'll just ask to buy a standard proprietary license because it's cheaper and doesn't involve legal.