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> For one thing it hasn't failed, the free software movement has been an amazing success. It has failed. Open software hasn't failed. But thats not the same a

> For one thing it hasn't failed, the free software movement has been an amazing success. It has failed. Open software hasn't failed. But thats not the same as free software. Sure there is a lot of open and free software but there is soo much more open software which is not good for the free software movement. Weather that is because of it being open but not free or weather it's open and free but tightly controlled in ways which hurt the free software movement in the bigger picture.

Gigachad 4y ago
This comment is splitting hairs that don’t even exist. I have never once heard the term “open software”. The closest match is Open Source. The OSI definition for open source is exactly the same as the FSF Free Software. Another adjacent term is “Source Available” for software that isn’t open source but you can get the source, like Unreal engine. There is also Open Core for software that has an open source part and a proprietary extension. Like GitLab.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > The OSI definition for open source is exactly the same as the FSF Free Software. It is not. If it is, you should explain that to every other expert and lawyer involved in litigating the differences, because they're operating under a delusion. They are mutually inclusive licenses, because OSI licensed stuff can always be relicensed to GPL (or anything else, really), and because OSI says that GPL is also OSI (although I don't understand why.) But they're different. You have to share your changes in GPL if you distribute them. That's it. That's the difference.
  - bonzini 4y ago
    You are confusing free software and copyleft. Not all free software is copyleft, and not all copyleft licenses are GPL compatible. But all free software is open source and vice versa. The four freedoms and the open source definition are intentionally equivalent.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    The OSI doesn’t define their own licences. They set out a bunch of rules about what open source means and then list which common licences fit those rules. Their rules are basically the same as the FSF essential freedoms list. Which is why GPL software falls under the OSI definition of open source.
- dathinab 4y ago
  I intentionally didn't use a well defined term as it would miss the point. There is all kind of somehow "open" software which might be OSI open source or even be GPL licensed but is de-facto not free software. Like I have seen more then one case where GPL or similar was used to archive "open sourcing the software" while "making sure no on complying with law can benefit relevantly from it". E.g. publish a software under GPL which is strongly dependent all through the stack on some proprietary software which is GPL incompatible but has some pseudo decoupling though some interfaces. The company which wrote the software just uses a different license when they use it. Everyone else would have to spend impractical amounts of time to create adapters to make it actually usable under the GPL license. Sometimes not much less time then rewriting it from scratch. I have seen this pattern quite often. Through more often with AGPL then with GPL. Sometime it did feel that such theoretically but not practically free software likes (A)GPLv3 more the actually free software does like it (but I'm pretty sure this is a bubble).
bruce511 4y ago
You are measuring success in terms of specific license use. Or authorship. And by those measures its easy to say the FSF has failed. If however you look at software as a whole, and compare today to say the early 80's, then you might note that the landscape is very different and wonder how that happened. Today software exists unler a multitude of licenses, written by innumerable authors. A huge fraction of all software is either open, or built on open. While Open Source and Free Software are different idealogically, they ultimately, broadly, confer the same freedoms on users. That any of this exits _at all_ is thanks to the FSF - they won the war a long time ago. They are the very definition of success. A success that so many take for granted that we now wonder if they are useful anymore. Hint: they are.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  >While Open Source and Free Software are different idealogically, they ultimately, broadly, confer the same freedoms on users. i don't know... i could be way off base but MIT and BSD allow devs to FORK the code and turn it into proprietary code throwing all benefits of "open source" into the wind. "enterprise friendly" is often mixed up but the reality is the end user ends up on the short end of the stick..
  - bruce511 4y ago
    Hence the word "broadly". MIT etc allow for Open Source code to be used in proprietary software, true. Whether this is good or bad, depends on your point of view, and is very newanced. For example I can use OPENSSL (MIT licensed) in a proprietary system, but I would argue that is better for end users than not. Having a few solid libraries in play is arguably better than a multitude of home-grown closed commercial libraries. OSI is clearly not FSF. FSF persues a future with no proprietary software. That's a necessary stance for someone to have in the world, it sets a goal post. OSI seeks to make code that has maximal utility by being useful in open and closed environments. MIT does not prevent companies contributing code, it does not hold back a project in any way, it just makes the code more widely spread and more "utilitarian". Edit: so it does not eliminate "all" the benefits of Open source, it may remove some of them. Alternatively it may be a net gain if the software is actually used more. Technically, yes, a company can fork OPENSSL, add features to it, and ship it closed. But why would they? Certainly if the did they remove no utility from openssl for everyone else. Equally SQLite has a public domain license and that does not seem to have hurt it in any way. There are plenty of contributers etc.

Gigachad 4y ago

This comment is splitting hairs that don’t even exist. I have never once heard the term “open software”. The closest match is Open Source. The OSI definition for open source is exactly the same as the FSF Free Software. Another adjacent term is “Source Available” for software that isn’t open source but you can get the source, like Unreal engine. There is also Open Core for software that has an open source part and a proprietary extension. Like GitLab.

pessimizer 4y ago
> The OSI definition for open source is exactly the same as the FSF Free Software. It is not. If it is, you should explain that to every other expert and lawyer involved in litigating the differences, because they're operating under a delusion. They are mutually inclusive licenses, because OSI licensed stuff can always be relicensed to GPL (or anything else, really), and because OSI says that GPL is also OSI (although I don't understand why.) But they're different. You have to share your changes in GPL if you distribute them. That's it. That's the difference.
- bonzini 4y ago
  You are confusing free software and copyleft. Not all free software is copyleft, and not all copyleft licenses are GPL compatible. But all free software is open source and vice versa. The four freedoms and the open source definition are intentionally equivalent.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  The OSI doesn’t define their own licences. They set out a bunch of rules about what open source means and then list which common licences fit those rules. Their rules are basically the same as the FSF essential freedoms list. Which is why GPL software falls under the OSI definition of open source.
dathinab 4y ago
I intentionally didn't use a well defined term as it would miss the point. There is all kind of somehow "open" software which might be OSI open source or even be GPL licensed but is de-facto not free software. Like I have seen more then one case where GPL or similar was used to archive "open sourcing the software" while "making sure no on complying with law can benefit relevantly from it". E.g. publish a software under GPL which is strongly dependent all through the stack on some proprietary software which is GPL incompatible but has some pseudo decoupling though some interfaces. The company which wrote the software just uses a different license when they use it. Everyone else would have to spend impractical amounts of time to create adapters to make it actually usable under the GPL license. Sometimes not much less time then rewriting it from scratch. I have seen this pattern quite often. Through more often with AGPL then with GPL. Sometime it did feel that such theoretically but not practically free software likes (A)GPLv3 more the actually free software does like it (but I'm pretty sure this is a bubble).

bruce511 4y ago

You are measuring success in terms of specific license use. Or authorship. And by those measures its easy to say the FSF has failed. If however you look at software as a whole, and compare today to say the early 80's, then you might note that the landscape is very different and wonder how that happened. Today software exists unler a multitude of licenses, written by innumerable authors. A huge fraction of all software is either open, or built on open. While Open Source and Free Software are different idealogically, they ultimately, broadly, confer the same freedoms on users. That any of this exits _at all_ is thanks to the FSF - they won the war a long time ago. They are the very definition of success. A success that so many take for granted that we now wonder if they are useful anymore. Hint: they are.

2Gkashmiri 4y ago
>While Open Source and Free Software are different idealogically, they ultimately, broadly, confer the same freedoms on users. i don't know... i could be way off base but MIT and BSD allow devs to FORK the code and turn it into proprietary code throwing all benefits of "open source" into the wind. "enterprise friendly" is often mixed up but the reality is the end user ends up on the short end of the stick..
- bruce511 4y ago
  Hence the word "broadly". MIT etc allow for Open Source code to be used in proprietary software, true. Whether this is good or bad, depends on your point of view, and is very newanced. For example I can use OPENSSL (MIT licensed) in a proprietary system, but I would argue that is better for end users than not. Having a few solid libraries in play is arguably better than a multitude of home-grown closed commercial libraries. OSI is clearly not FSF. FSF persues a future with no proprietary software. That's a necessary stance for someone to have in the world, it sets a goal post. OSI seeks to make code that has maximal utility by being useful in open and closed environments. MIT does not prevent companies contributing code, it does not hold back a project in any way, it just makes the code more widely spread and more "utilitarian". Edit: so it does not eliminate "all" the benefits of Open source, it may remove some of them. Alternatively it may be a net gain if the software is actually used more. Technically, yes, a company can fork OPENSSL, add features to it, and ship it closed. But why would they? Certainly if the did they remove no utility from openssl for everyone else. Equally SQLite has a public domain license and that does not seem to have hurt it in any way. There are plenty of contributers etc.