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My point is “open source” doesn’t have any meaning in a legal sense. Even the Open Source Initiative is an “initiative”. It’s a word we use to describe a concep
by bradgessler 4y ago
My point is “open source” doesn’t have any meaning in a legal sense. Even the Open Source Initiative is an “initiative”. It’s a word we use to describe a concept that describes specific licenses.
What does have legal meaning is copyrights and specific licenses, like MIT, GPL, etc.
For example, I could be a bozo and claim any software is open source. The open source initiative (and general public, HN, etc) might not agree and issue a public statement, but I’m not aware that they have any legal remedies unless they have a trademark on the phrase “open source”.
- mattl 4y agoThey might but also everyone is going to think you’re a bozo if you use “open source” and it’s not.
- bradgessler 4y agoYes! That's the boundary I was looking for. I can see how it might need a different name. I have seen "shared source", but that feels weird too.
- mattl 4y agoSource available?
- bradgessler 4y agohttps://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/default.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/default.aspx
- mattl 4y agoYeah, I like "source available" for things with published source code but where you're somewhat limited by what you can really do with it.