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Both Free Software and Open Source Software (commonly abbreviated together as FOSS) does have a established meaning though, authority or not. Starting to includ
by capableweb 4y ago
Both Free Software and Open Source Software (commonly abbreviated together as FOSS) does have a established meaning though, authority or not. Starting to include things like "do no evil" in something already established, adds confusion. "Do you mean old FOSS or new FOSS?"
What you can do instead, is to come up with a new term for what you want to describe. So instead of just saying your software has a open source license, say it had a open-but-only-good-users license (whatever that means), so the rest of us don't get confused.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoFor bonus points, that term already exists; the original article we're commenting on says that they're calling it "ethical source".
- woodruffw 4y agoI don't think an appreciable amount of confusion is added: there's already a wide range of "approved" open source licenses that impose varying restrictions or requirements on end users, packagers, and potential contributors. AGPL, for example, is materially different in its requirements from Apache-2, and yet both are "open source." Put another way: it's not clear why the current complexity is okay, but other kinds of complexity (that accurately reflect the current ethical landscape, instead of the ethical landscape of software in the 1990s and 2000s) are not.
- rootusrootus 4y ago> that accurately reflect the current ethical landscape, instead of the ethical landscape of software in the 1990s and 2000s This seems like it provides exactly the reason why we shouldn't have such a thing. What is the ethical landscape of the 2040s going to look like compared to today?
- woodruffw 4y agoBy that token, we shouldn’t have open source at all, even in the OSI’s approved form. After all, it’s a direct product of a historical ethical landscape, one that shaped our current landscape.