5 ms·

The "dogmatic definition" of open source is what has been used for decades. Applying it to something that doesn't meet that definition invites confusion. If a

The "dogmatic definition" of open source is what has been used for decades. Applying it to something that doesn't meet that definition invites confusion. If a project wants to do something different, and develop an "open project" under some terms that aren't open source, they are free to do so, but they shouldn't call it something it's not.

_benedict 4y ago
[flagged]
- dang 4y ago
  This seems to be the point at which this thread devolved into a flamewar. I'm sure that wasn't your intent, but it's a direct line from provocations like "you aren’t the language police", "this weird attitude", and "just nonsense" to the "blow it your ass" that we got below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529541 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529327). If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. That means being more careful to "edit out swipes", as the guidelines put it.
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  > "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." > "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "who is to be master - that's all." - Through the Looking-Glass, slightly adjusted. The whole goal of calling it "open source" is to take advantage of the positive connotations associated with the term. But the positive connotations come from software published under the dogma, and are inseparable from it. (You can see the same twists and turns in Elastic's FAQ, where they desperately try to twist language so that "open" and "source" are as close together as possible without outright making contact. Guess nobody told them they can just use the word under their own definition, or as the rest of the world calls it, "lie".)
  - blowski 4y ago
    And yet. Outside of HN, most people I know refer to Elasticsearch as open source.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      Do they even know the terms?
      - blowski 4y ago
        Probably not by the definitions you're using, or at least they don't care about them. Either way, this is one of those age old debates about descriptive vs prescriptive language that will have absolutely no impact whatsoever. People will continue to post things they call open source that you disagree are open source, and you will continue to moan about it.
  - _benedict 4y ago
    None of these facts are relevant for how people use language. You may lament that people are beginning to use a word differently, but you cannot stop it and you cannot declare it authoritatively wrong. You can only lament and exhort. Language evolves.
    - ddevault 4y ago
      Language /does/ evolve. However, it's still dishonest to use an established term in a manner contrary to the broadly understood definition. Furthermore, the rationale for an unorthodox definition of open source is generally forwarded by those with a financial interest in their unorthodox definition, and in so doing they are asking others to work against their own interests by surrendering the mutually agreed upon rights associated with the term. The orthodox view on open source is a useful and broadly understood shorthand for a certain enumeration of rights, the withholding of those rights disproportionately serves a certain group of interests at the expense of others, and disregarding these problems and using the terminology incorrectly in spite of them is willfully dishonest.
- dspearson 4y ago
  It is wrong. I'm sorry to be blunt, but here we are. Just because pepsi tastes like coca cola, doesn't make it coca cola. Open source/free software places no restrictions on use/modification/distribution, end of story. With the sole exception of copyleft, which disallows you to distribute & withhold source, i.e. stopping you from depriving others of the very freedom that you benefitted from. This places restrictions on use. Ergo it is not open source. Attempting to muddy the waters by using hand-wavey "you get most of your freedom!" type talk just muddies the waters and is precisely why the term got trademarked and why a definition exists. And it really is not hard to understand.
  - _benedict 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - jazzyjackson 4y ago
      > If people use it in this context, it means this thing. to them, it means that thing to them
      - _benedict 4y ago
        Yep, and if a bunch of people manage to communicate with others successfully using this term then…
    - bheadmaster 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - _benedict 4y ago
        No, it means some people started using the word differently, no more no less. Cool your own use of language, I don’t think it’s at all appropriate or within HN guidelines.
        bheadmaster 4y ago
- mikebenfield 4y ago
  "Open source" is not a term that developed naturally through normal language development. It's a term of art specifically created to have a particular meaning. Your argument is roughly equivalent to this one: "I can call this random cereal Cheerios, because language evolves and neither you nor General Mills decides how people use language."
  - _benedict 4y ago
    Nope, it isn’t special. Indeed your example is why companies try very hard to prevent words from changing meaning. Google for instance no longer means “search with Google” but to search the internet for something, with Google or some other service, and history is littered with such examples - including ones that became so prevalent they lost their trademark protection.
    - mikebenfield 4y ago
      I don't understand why you think this is a good counterexample. Google is still trademarked. If I make a search engine and say, "You can use my search engine to Google things," I'm probably in the wrong both legally and ethically.
      - _benedict 4y ago
        Open source isn’t trademarked, and probably isn’t possible to trademark. So trademark status isn’t relevant here, only the change in usage.
        mikebenfield 4y ago
        You're literally the one who made the analogy of "open source" to trademarks, and now you're trying to shoot down my explanation of why your analogy doesn't work by saying trademark status is irrelevant... Good grief.
        _benedict 4y ago
- wikfwikf 4y ago
  But the point of the GP comment was that language has not 'evolved', but is intentionally being used in a misleading way here.
ianbutler 4y ago
Sure, I agree. Let's start popularizing other terms, but I think the relevance of the term Open Source will see a substantial decrease then, because I don't think people now largely use the word to mean what it meant decades ago. I think the popularity the term has now is for reasons entirely different, reasons like community building and some reasons of morality, and I think the term can either evolve to fit the industry's current norms or be reduced. I would assert/guess/think that there are more developers who have started in the last 10-15 years who use the term for its colloquial meaning than there were developers in the entirety of the field in the preceding 50 years. Just from a numbers perspective, if I'm right, the colloquialism is going to win out.

_benedict 4y ago

[flagged]

dang 4y ago
This seems to be the point at which this thread devolved into a flamewar. I'm sure that wasn't your intent, but it's a direct line from provocations like "you aren’t the language police", "this weird attitude", and "just nonsense" to the "blow it your ass" that we got below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529541 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529327). If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. That means being more careful to "edit out swipes", as the guidelines put it.
FeepingCreature 4y ago
> "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." > "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "who is to be master - that's all." - Through the Looking-Glass, slightly adjusted. The whole goal of calling it "open source" is to take advantage of the positive connotations associated with the term. But the positive connotations come from software published under the dogma, and are inseparable from it. (You can see the same twists and turns in Elastic's FAQ, where they desperately try to twist language so that "open" and "source" are as close together as possible without outright making contact. Guess nobody told them they can just use the word under their own definition, or as the rest of the world calls it, "lie".)
- blowski 4y ago
  And yet. Outside of HN, most people I know refer to Elasticsearch as open source.
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    Do they even know the terms?
    - blowski 4y ago
      Probably not by the definitions you're using, or at least they don't care about them. Either way, this is one of those age old debates about descriptive vs prescriptive language that will have absolutely no impact whatsoever. People will continue to post things they call open source that you disagree are open source, and you will continue to moan about it.
- _benedict 4y ago
  None of these facts are relevant for how people use language. You may lament that people are beginning to use a word differently, but you cannot stop it and you cannot declare it authoritatively wrong. You can only lament and exhort. Language evolves.
  - ddevault 4y ago
    Language /does/ evolve. However, it's still dishonest to use an established term in a manner contrary to the broadly understood definition. Furthermore, the rationale for an unorthodox definition of open source is generally forwarded by those with a financial interest in their unorthodox definition, and in so doing they are asking others to work against their own interests by surrendering the mutually agreed upon rights associated with the term. The orthodox view on open source is a useful and broadly understood shorthand for a certain enumeration of rights, the withholding of those rights disproportionately serves a certain group of interests at the expense of others, and disregarding these problems and using the terminology incorrectly in spite of them is willfully dishonest.
dspearson 4y ago
It is wrong. I'm sorry to be blunt, but here we are. Just because pepsi tastes like coca cola, doesn't make it coca cola. Open source/free software places no restrictions on use/modification/distribution, end of story. With the sole exception of copyleft, which disallows you to distribute & withhold source, i.e. stopping you from depriving others of the very freedom that you benefitted from. This places restrictions on use. Ergo it is not open source. Attempting to muddy the waters by using hand-wavey "you get most of your freedom!" type talk just muddies the waters and is precisely why the term got trademarked and why a definition exists. And it really is not hard to understand.
- _benedict 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - jazzyjackson 4y ago
    > If people use it in this context, it means this thing. to them, it means that thing to them
    - _benedict 4y ago
      Yep, and if a bunch of people manage to communicate with others successfully using this term then…
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - _benedict 4y ago
      No, it means some people started using the word differently, no more no less. Cool your own use of language, I don’t think it’s at all appropriate or within HN guidelines.
      - bheadmaster 4y ago
mikebenfield 4y ago
"Open source" is not a term that developed naturally through normal language development. It's a term of art specifically created to have a particular meaning. Your argument is roughly equivalent to this one: "I can call this random cereal Cheerios, because language evolves and neither you nor General Mills decides how people use language."
- _benedict 4y ago
  Nope, it isn’t special. Indeed your example is why companies try very hard to prevent words from changing meaning. Google for instance no longer means “search with Google” but to search the internet for something, with Google or some other service, and history is littered with such examples - including ones that became so prevalent they lost their trademark protection.
  - mikebenfield 4y ago
    I don't understand why you think this is a good counterexample. Google is still trademarked. If I make a search engine and say, "You can use my search engine to Google things," I'm probably in the wrong both legally and ethically.
    - _benedict 4y ago
      Open source isn’t trademarked, and probably isn’t possible to trademark. So trademark status isn’t relevant here, only the change in usage.
      - mikebenfield 4y ago
        You're literally the one who made the analogy of "open source" to trademarks, and now you're trying to shoot down my explanation of why your analogy doesn't work by saying trademark status is irrelevant... Good grief.
        _benedict 4y ago
wikfwikf 4y ago
But the point of the GP comment was that language has not 'evolved', but is intentionally being used in a misleading way here.

ianbutler 4y ago

Sure, I agree. Let's start popularizing other terms, but I think the relevance of the term Open Source will see a substantial decrease then, because I don't think people now largely use the word to mean what it meant decades ago. I think the popularity the term has now is for reasons entirely different, reasons like community building and some reasons of morality, and I think the term can either evolve to fit the industry's current norms or be reduced. I would assert/guess/think that there are more developers who have started in the last 10-15 years who use the term for its colloquial meaning than there were developers in the entirety of the field in the preceding 50 years. Just from a numbers perspective, if I'm right, the colloquialism is going to win out.