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It’s disheartening, especially so in a tech community, to see comments appear so quickly to cast judgement. “Dual licensing is not open source!” This is same k

It’s disheartening, especially so in a tech community, to see comments appear so quickly to cast judgement. “Dual licensing is not open source!” This is same kind of pedantry that haunts every thread like the last. We know that a bowl of cereal isn’t thought of as a soup, nor is a hotdog thought a sandwich. And yet, there’s always someone out there with the time to argue semantics. The proof is in the pudding! Software developers who have any business sense will tell you that customers presume that open-source is synonymous with source-available. Marketing your software with that presumption isn’t a moral failing — It’s business! And if anyone out their still has an unfulfilled quandary, I would recommend that they try to monetize their open-source code and experience the illucrative rewards of the MIT and BSD licenses.

franciscop 4y ago
Exactly! I'm considering a small project in the future, and I'd make it open source _mainly_ for a security point of view. The kind of software in particular would benefit the users massively if they can read the code, and even self-host for the most paranoid (with a fee and a very restrictive license?). Sure, it'd not be in the "open source" space and I would personally not market it as such, but while it's way better than not having access to the code I know if it ends up in HN comments like the one you mention will be plenty.
bsedlm 4y ago
what's worse, open source has nothing to do with freedom
jahewson 4y ago
Nope. Sorry but you don’t get to hijack the term “open source”. There’s a reason we have gone to considerable lengths to define it https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd Openness is an important principle and it includes not discriminating against fields of endeavour. Think “open society” not “open jar”. And if you disagree? Well, then I have some free software to sell you! > Software developers who have any business sense will tell you that customers presume that open-source is synonymous with source-available. As a software developer with business sense, I call BS on this made-up “fact”. All true scotsmen agree with me.
- nocman 4y ago
  > Nope. Sorry but you don’t get to hijack the term “open source” The problem with this viewpoint is that the OSI is not the final arbiter of the English language. Yes, the OSI has an "official definition" of what constitutes "open source" software, but there is a large group of people in the industry that equate the term "open source" with the concept of the source being available, and nothing more. You can shout "wrong, wrong, wrong!" all you want, but I doubt you are going to change many of those people's minds. The Free Software Foundation has a similar problem with the term "free software". The people making the definitions are generally passionate about those definitions (for good reasons, mostly, in my estimation). However, I don't think an approach that starts with "Sorry but you don't get to hijack the term" is going to have a net positive effect. If anything, it will probably have a negative effect.
  - jahewson 4y ago
    Now this feels like arguing semantics. Because multiple people are wrong, this makes them right? Sorry, no. As I said, there’s a reason we have the OSD and it’s to avoid these silly conversations in which people try to argue that because a sufficient number of people think that turquoise is blue, that it is therefore blue. This is a solved problem, it was solved 15 years ago. Nobody working in this industry has any excuse for being unaware of it. We should not be attempting to re-litigate it on every thread ever. Too many people trying to pass their work off as open source when it’s not are not acting in good faith and are looking to trade off the goodwill of the phrase “open source” for personal profit. I’m going to complain about this, net positive effect be damned.
    - interroboink 4y ago
      A small aside: > Because multiple people are wrong, this makes them right? I am sympathetic to your point of view, but in terms of spoken language, this is actually how it works (to my dismay, sometimes). If enough people use the term wrong, then that becomes the new definition. c.f. "literally," which can now mean "figuratively." I roll my eyes, but there it is.
dllthomas 4y ago
Uncontroversially, dual licensing is not open source when neither of the licenses are open source. More controversially, a "non-commercial" license is not open source. This is clearly the position of the OSI, though that isn't necessarily dispositive. But note that this is not the same thing as a license with terms that happen to incidentally make some commercial use impractical (like the AGPL), which may be what the parent meant by "non-commercial", in which case we just have people talking past each other.
- TAForObvReasons 4y ago
  OSI muddies the waters by accepting AGPL as an open source license. As argued many times, it is really a EULA, not a proper license in the sense that GPL or BSD or MIT are software licenses.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    Since when are EULAs not software licenses?
    - TAForObvReasons 4y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31190064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31190064 explains it well: > The GPL is a copyright license. It applies when copyright law would otherwise prevent distributing some program. If I were to violate the GPL, for example by sending someone a compiled version and refusing to provide the source, then there's a clear legal theory by which copyright law could be applied. > That "one added requirement" in the AGPL turns it into a EULA, because it's an attempt to regulate for which purposes a user may run the program. If I were to run a modified AGPL'd SSH server on my own hardware, the question of whether I'm violating the AGPL depends on whether I'm allowing others to access it remotely. If the AGPL can be violated without copyright infringement, it's clearly in a different legal category than the GPL.
      - teraflop 4y ago
mym1990 4y ago
But a hotdog IS a sandwich!
- caseyohara 4y ago
  Hot dog is actually a taco according to The Cube Rule of food identification https://cuberule.com https://cuberule.com
  - mym1990 4y ago
    It’s just so confusing when they put a “sub sandwich” in the taco section.
modzu 4y ago
we should start the osai, open source available initiative, and publish a modern definition of open source (tm). and eventually we'll win, as alzheimers sets in for the old timer commie hippies freaking out about it lol

franciscop 4y ago

Exactly! I'm considering a small project in the future, and I'd make it open source _mainly_ for a security point of view. The kind of software in particular would benefit the users massively if they can read the code, and even self-host for the most paranoid (with a fee and a very restrictive license?). Sure, it'd not be in the "open source" space and I would personally not market it as such, but while it's way better than not having access to the code I know if it ends up in HN comments like the one you mention will be plenty.

bsedlm 4y ago

what's worse, open source has nothing to do with freedom

jahewson 4y ago

Nope. Sorry but you don’t get to hijack the term “open source”. There’s a reason we have gone to considerable lengths to define it https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd Openness is an important principle and it includes not discriminating against fields of endeavour. Think “open society” not “open jar”. And if you disagree? Well, then I have some free software to sell you! > Software developers who have any business sense will tell you that customers presume that open-source is synonymous with source-available. As a software developer with business sense, I call BS on this made-up “fact”. All true scotsmen agree with me.

nocman 4y ago
> Nope. Sorry but you don’t get to hijack the term “open source” The problem with this viewpoint is that the OSI is not the final arbiter of the English language. Yes, the OSI has an "official definition" of what constitutes "open source" software, but there is a large group of people in the industry that equate the term "open source" with the concept of the source being available, and nothing more. You can shout "wrong, wrong, wrong!" all you want, but I doubt you are going to change many of those people's minds. The Free Software Foundation has a similar problem with the term "free software". The people making the definitions are generally passionate about those definitions (for good reasons, mostly, in my estimation). However, I don't think an approach that starts with "Sorry but you don't get to hijack the term" is going to have a net positive effect. If anything, it will probably have a negative effect.
- jahewson 4y ago
  Now this feels like arguing semantics. Because multiple people are wrong, this makes them right? Sorry, no. As I said, there’s a reason we have the OSD and it’s to avoid these silly conversations in which people try to argue that because a sufficient number of people think that turquoise is blue, that it is therefore blue. This is a solved problem, it was solved 15 years ago. Nobody working in this industry has any excuse for being unaware of it. We should not be attempting to re-litigate it on every thread ever. Too many people trying to pass their work off as open source when it’s not are not acting in good faith and are looking to trade off the goodwill of the phrase “open source” for personal profit. I’m going to complain about this, net positive effect be damned.
  - interroboink 4y ago
    A small aside: > Because multiple people are wrong, this makes them right? I am sympathetic to your point of view, but in terms of spoken language, this is actually how it works (to my dismay, sometimes). If enough people use the term wrong, then that becomes the new definition. c.f. "literally," which can now mean "figuratively." I roll my eyes, but there it is.

dllthomas 4y ago

Uncontroversially, dual licensing is not open source when neither of the licenses are open source. More controversially, a "non-commercial" license is not open source. This is clearly the position of the OSI, though that isn't necessarily dispositive. But note that this is not the same thing as a license with terms that happen to incidentally make some commercial use impractical (like the AGPL), which may be what the parent meant by "non-commercial", in which case we just have people talking past each other.

TAForObvReasons 4y ago
OSI muddies the waters by accepting AGPL as an open source license. As argued many times, it is really a EULA, not a proper license in the sense that GPL or BSD or MIT are software licenses.
- monocasa 4y ago
  Since when are EULAs not software licenses?
  - TAForObvReasons 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31190064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31190064 explains it well: > The GPL is a copyright license. It applies when copyright law would otherwise prevent distributing some program. If I were to violate the GPL, for example by sending someone a compiled version and refusing to provide the source, then there's a clear legal theory by which copyright law could be applied. > That "one added requirement" in the AGPL turns it into a EULA, because it's an attempt to regulate for which purposes a user may run the program. If I were to run a modified AGPL'd SSH server on my own hardware, the question of whether I'm violating the AGPL depends on whether I'm allowing others to access it remotely. If the AGPL can be violated without copyright infringement, it's clearly in a different legal category than the GPL.
    - teraflop 4y ago

mym1990 4y ago

But a hotdog IS a sandwich!

caseyohara 4y ago
Hot dog is actually a taco according to The Cube Rule of food identification https://cuberule.com https://cuberule.com
- mym1990 4y ago
  It’s just so confusing when they put a “sub sandwich” in the taco section.

modzu 4y ago

we should start the osai, open source available initiative, and publish a modern definition of open source (tm). and eventually we'll win, as alzheimers sets in for the old timer commie hippies freaking out about it lol