5 ms·

Because they had a criteria and they conducted a review of lots of licenses. It's not any less "gatekeepery" if some random person or company takes their random

Because they had a criteria and they conducted a review of lots of licenses. It's not any less "gatekeepery" if some random person or company takes their random license and says "here, we say this one license is open source based on our own criteria that we invented for ourselves, accept it."

xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
You're confused. A person or company claiming some term indeed applies to something is not gate keeping. It's when the opposite happens, when a person or company denies you use of that term, for arbitrary reasons. So, I'd say OSI is, by definition, designed to be the gatekeepers of "Open Source".
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Unfortunately they don't own the term and can't tell anyone what to do with it.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    You're right, but that misses the point, they put in the work to define and promote the term over a span of more than 20 years. If your plan is to undo that 20 years worth of work, you had better be prepared to take on the same amount of work over the same time span, and I hope the only reason it's done is because we can verifiably prove the results will be better for everyone.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    But fortunately, the overall community including the vast majority of people involved in packaging and distributing Open Source software agree with them, and in a lot of ways they do own the term and they do get to tell people what they can do with it. You can go argue with every major Linux distro, the Homebrew devs, package managers, and most key Open Source advocates if you want. Get them to change their definitions and the software they accept, and then maybe you'll have a point. But in the meantime, you shouldn't be surprised when the community lashes out at you for appropriating decades of PR and public education just because you don't like that the definition we've always used to describe ourselves doesn't fit a particular business model. OSI/GNU have authority on this subject because we the community grant them authority. We're not interested in people coming in and leeching off the goodwill of Open Source while simultaneously restricting users' rights. We are as a community guarding our terminology because our terms have value, and OSI is the standardized, commonly understood definition that we have advocated for. If you want to call that gatekeeping, I don't care. I don't want Open Source to be like the "organic" aisle at the grocery store, I want it to mean something specific.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      I just think if they'd picked an original term and trademarked it, the whole thing would be simpler. It could be Open Source (tm) and they could enforce it, rather than relying on 'lashing out' as you say.
      - danShumway 6y ago
        Okay fine. And your solution to that is to repeat the exact same mistake by trying to fight over the same term? On some level, you have to know that the phrase Open Source has value. That's why companies want to use it. That's why they're arguing over broadening the definition and calling the OSI a gatekeeper. They want to be able to use that phrase because it has positive connotations. It's not a linguistic debate, it's a debate over being able to imply that some software is Free even when it's not. If you think that the OSI made a mistake by picking an existing phrase, that's a totally valid criticism you can have, but as a community we're still not going to let you redefine the phrase. We've invested in this. Take your own advice and come up with a new word for these new licenses.
        MaxBarraclough 6y ago
        This topic has turned up recently on HN. [0][1] Your position here matches my own: open source is a precise term of art in the software community, the way flap is a precise term of art in aviation. [1] Trademarks are not especially relevant, and neither is the early history of the term. To put it in legalistic terms: you can face legal consequences for false advertising despite making no use of trademarked language. The court will not be interested in the etymology of the words you used, that's an academic matter, it's the modern meaning that counts. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25366825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25366825 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25834342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25834342
      - type0 6y ago
        Doesn't matter though, I will still call a spade - "spade". You can keep calling a shovel - "spade", just don't be surprised that no one understands what you mean.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  I would agree with you if anyone was saying "hey the term open source doesn't mean anything and you can use it for whatever you want" but that's not what I've ever seen happening, and I doubt anyone wants that because it would make the term useless. What we actually do see is other groups trying to promote their own alternate definition of the term and trying to deny the OSI's usage, for equally arbitrary reasons. It's the same form of gatekeeping. Please just come up with another phrase, that's what the OSI did after all when they found the term "free software" to be inadequate.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > Please just come up with another phrase, that's what the OSI did I think a bit of a myth. There's documented existing use of the term in the same context before the OSI say they came up with it, and they were denied the trademark by the USPTO because it was an existing simply descriptive term.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      I'm not saying they came up with the term before anyone in the world. While the term was used previously, it didn't have the concrete definition it does now. That's why they were able to do what they did.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        You said 'just come up with another phrase' and that's what they didn't do - they took an existing phrase with a similar meaning, and started to tell everyone they were going to advocate a different meaning. And then tried to trademark it to steal it from the community!!
        cycloptic 6y ago
        Sorry I didn't clarify -- They came up with a phrase that, while it existed, didn't have a concrete definition. To give an example, if someone right now wants to create "Source Available Initiative" or something like that I think that would conceptually be fine, even though the term is already in use, there is no organization that is clearly defining what it means. Does that explain it better? (Although I think creating more organizations like this is a terrible idea for other reasons, mostly having to do with license proliferation)

xyzzy_plugh 6y ago

You're confused. A person or company claiming some term indeed applies to something is not gate keeping. It's when the opposite happens, when a person or company denies you use of that term, for arbitrary reasons. So, I'd say OSI is, by definition, designed to be the gatekeepers of "Open Source".

chrisseaton 6y ago
Unfortunately they don't own the term and can't tell anyone what to do with it.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  You're right, but that misses the point, they put in the work to define and promote the term over a span of more than 20 years. If your plan is to undo that 20 years worth of work, you had better be prepared to take on the same amount of work over the same time span, and I hope the only reason it's done is because we can verifiably prove the results will be better for everyone.
- danShumway 6y ago
  But fortunately, the overall community including the vast majority of people involved in packaging and distributing Open Source software agree with them, and in a lot of ways they do own the term and they do get to tell people what they can do with it. You can go argue with every major Linux distro, the Homebrew devs, package managers, and most key Open Source advocates if you want. Get them to change their definitions and the software they accept, and then maybe you'll have a point. But in the meantime, you shouldn't be surprised when the community lashes out at you for appropriating decades of PR and public education just because you don't like that the definition we've always used to describe ourselves doesn't fit a particular business model. OSI/GNU have authority on this subject because we the community grant them authority. We're not interested in people coming in and leeching off the goodwill of Open Source while simultaneously restricting users' rights. We are as a community guarding our terminology because our terms have value, and OSI is the standardized, commonly understood definition that we have advocated for. If you want to call that gatekeeping, I don't care. I don't want Open Source to be like the "organic" aisle at the grocery store, I want it to mean something specific.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    I just think if they'd picked an original term and trademarked it, the whole thing would be simpler. It could be Open Source (tm) and they could enforce it, rather than relying on 'lashing out' as you say.
    - danShumway 6y ago
      Okay fine. And your solution to that is to repeat the exact same mistake by trying to fight over the same term? On some level, you have to know that the phrase Open Source has value. That's why companies want to use it. That's why they're arguing over broadening the definition and calling the OSI a gatekeeper. They want to be able to use that phrase because it has positive connotations. It's not a linguistic debate, it's a debate over being able to imply that some software is Free even when it's not. If you think that the OSI made a mistake by picking an existing phrase, that's a totally valid criticism you can have, but as a community we're still not going to let you redefine the phrase. We've invested in this. Take your own advice and come up with a new word for these new licenses.
      - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
        This topic has turned up recently on HN. [0][1] Your position here matches my own: open source is a precise term of art in the software community, the way flap is a precise term of art in aviation. [1] Trademarks are not especially relevant, and neither is the early history of the term. To put it in legalistic terms: you can face legal consequences for false advertising despite making no use of trademarked language. The court will not be interested in the etymology of the words you used, that's an academic matter, it's the modern meaning that counts. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25366825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25366825 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25834342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25834342
    - type0 6y ago
      Doesn't matter though, I will still call a spade - "spade". You can keep calling a shovel - "spade", just don't be surprised that no one understands what you mean.
cycloptic 6y ago
I would agree with you if anyone was saying "hey the term open source doesn't mean anything and you can use it for whatever you want" but that's not what I've ever seen happening, and I doubt anyone wants that because it would make the term useless. What we actually do see is other groups trying to promote their own alternate definition of the term and trying to deny the OSI's usage, for equally arbitrary reasons. It's the same form of gatekeeping. Please just come up with another phrase, that's what the OSI did after all when they found the term "free software" to be inadequate.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > Please just come up with another phrase, that's what the OSI did I think a bit of a myth. There's documented existing use of the term in the same context before the OSI say they came up with it, and they were denied the trademark by the USPTO because it was an existing simply descriptive term.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    I'm not saying they came up with the term before anyone in the world. While the term was used previously, it didn't have the concrete definition it does now. That's why they were able to do what they did.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      You said 'just come up with another phrase' and that's what they didn't do - they took an existing phrase with a similar meaning, and started to tell everyone they were going to advocate a different meaning. And then tried to trademark it to steal it from the community!!
      - cycloptic 6y ago
        Sorry I didn't clarify -- They came up with a phrase that, while it existed, didn't have a concrete definition. To give an example, if someone right now wants to create "Source Available Initiative" or something like that I think that would conceptually be fine, even though the term is already in use, there is no organization that is clearly defining what it means. Does that explain it better? (Although I think creating more organizations like this is a terrible idea for other reasons, mostly having to do with license proliferation)