3 ms·

> So, just because a license satisfies four freedoms doesn't make a piece of software "Open Source". It wasn't clear what your intent was when you presented yo

> So, just because a license satisfies four freedoms doesn't make a piece of software "Open Source". It wasn't clear what your intent was when you presented your example, since it does not actually illustrate your point. A piece of software consisting of a proprietary blob coupled with a minimal open source launcher is closed source as a whole because the majority of the software is closed source. That software does not satisfy the four freedoms, and is therefore not open source. > So a body examining licenses and saying that it's acceptable or not is a good thing to have. Yes, the OSI and FSF are important for establishing clear standards, and for helping developers and users identify exactly which licenses meet those standards.

bayindirh 3y ago
It was exaggerated example on purpose, but it's not very far from the truth. Many "Open Source" projects are licensed under a permissive or weak-copyleft license, everything incl. the source is put out there, hence you have the four freedoms, theoretically. A nice example: Try to "run" GitBook in a self hosted manner. You're free to do that. The code is out there. The license allows it, but there's no docs, and code is a landmine, probably. As I said before, try to use VSCodium in a useful manner. You won't be able to do that. You can incorporate parts of it to your tools, but it won't work as well as the "closed source, official" VSCode, because it's designed to be like that [0]. So, saying that every license allowing four freedoms is an open source license, or even saying that "every application which has a valid, vetted Open Source license" is Open Source software is a stretch nowadays. Lastly, we seen that not many companies thought about the ramifications of open sourcing their code properly. Elastic & HashiCorp are just two examples we made some noise about. [0]: https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
- commoner 3y ago
  GitBook hasn't been open source since October 2018 (https://github.com/GitbookIO/gitbook https://github.com/GitbookIO/gitbook) and software is judged by its most recent version. GitBook in its current form is a proprietary web service. The October 2018 version is open source, but it's also abandonware. VSCodium does exclude the proprietary features of Visual Studio Code, but I don't see how that should disqualify VSCodium from being open source. (I use VSCodium frequently and I am satisfied with its feature set, so I strongly disagree with your claim that it is not usable in a useful manner.) VSCodium is also maintained by a community that is not sponsored by Microsoft, so I don't think it's fair to say that it is intentionally designed to be inferior to Visual Studio Code. We both agree that Visual Studio Code is not open source. Elasticsearch (Elastic License, Server Side Public License) and HashiCorp (Business Source License) have adopted licenses that do not provide the four freedoms, and the software licensed in that way is not open source.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    I tried to deploy GitBook in 2017 IIRC, and left it alone after seeing how it's shared to prevent re-deployment. I didn't know they abandoned the idea of "Looking Like Open Source" in 2018. VSCodium may be open source in theory, but it's designed to be deployed in a less functional fashion than VSCode, more like a "Freemium", hence the "Codium", ringing me like "-ish", or "looks like". It's designed as a funnel. Yes, it's there, and it works, but it funnels users to Microsoft's closed version. Or you can embed it as an editor to your project, but not much more. I'd rather use KATE, Eclipse, Vim, Emacs, etc. Instead of it. Heck even Atom or its current incarnation is better. Zed is also like VSCodium. The tool is "Open Source", with a proprietary backend and egregious data siphoning capabilities. It backstabs you, and being open source changes nothing. I have given Elastic and HashiCorp as examples of companies using open source as a way to get support and traction in the early days, and back-pedaling when things didn't go as their plan. Whether this is calculated or not is another matter, but they look like they didn't fully think it through.
    - commoner 3y ago
      I agree that if open source client software requires a proprietary web service to be used, that software as a whole is not open source. That doesn't mean the test of the four freedoms is insufficient, it simply means that the test needs to be applied to both the client and the server. > VSCodium may be open source in theory, but it's designed to be deployed in a less functional fashion than VSCode, more like a "Freemium", hence the "Codium", ringing me like "-ish", or "looks like". VSCodium is not "designed" to be less functional, since it is a project maintained by developers who are unaffiliated with Microsoft. VSCodium is an application that is "deployed" in the exact same way as Visual Studio Code on the desktop. The name VSCodium is a nod to Chromium, not "freemium".[1] Using the Chrome analogy, Visual Studio Code is like Chrome, proprietary and closed source. Microsoft's "Code - OSS" repo[2] is like Chromium, and serves as a functional open source base for the closed source software with the proprietary client-side features omitted. VSCodium[3] is like Ungoogled Chromium,[4] with both being community projects unaffiliated with Microsoft/Google. VSCodium takes "Code - OSS", strips out the telemetry, and uses the Open VSX Registry[5] for extensions by default instead of Microsoft's proprietary Visual Studio Marketplace. > Or you can embed it as an editor to your project, but not much more. Have you ever used VSCodium? It's a full editor that includes almost all of the features of Visual Studio Code. It does not need to be embedded to be used. > Heck even Atom or its current incarnation is better. You're entitled to your own opinion, but Atom was developed by GitHub, which was acquired by Microsoft. After the acquisition, Microsoft diverted development efforts to Visual Studio Code, and both VSCodium and "Code - OSS" currently run circles around Atom in both performance and features. It doesn't help that Atom was discontinued last year, with the final version having been released in March 2022.[7] [1] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/28 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/28 [2] https://github.com/microsoft/vscode https://github.com/microsoft/vscode [3] https://vscodium.com https://vscodium.com / Source: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium [4] https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium [5] https://open-vsx.org https://open-vsx.org / Source: https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx [6] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/VSCode https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/VSCode [7] https://github.com/atom/atom https://github.com/atom/atom

bayindirh 3y ago

It was exaggerated example on purpose, but it's not very far from the truth. Many "Open Source" projects are licensed under a permissive or weak-copyleft license, everything incl. the source is put out there, hence you have the four freedoms, theoretically. A nice example: Try to "run" GitBook in a self hosted manner. You're free to do that. The code is out there. The license allows it, but there's no docs, and code is a landmine, probably. As I said before, try to use VSCodium in a useful manner. You won't be able to do that. You can incorporate parts of it to your tools, but it won't work as well as the "closed source, official" VSCode, because it's designed to be like that [0]. So, saying that every license allowing four freedoms is an open source license, or even saying that "every application which has a valid, vetted Open Source license" is Open Source software is a stretch nowadays. Lastly, we seen that not many companies thought about the ramifications of open sourcing their code properly. Elastic & HashiCorp are just two examples we made some noise about. [0]: https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

commoner 3y ago
GitBook hasn't been open source since October 2018 (https://github.com/GitbookIO/gitbook https://github.com/GitbookIO/gitbook) and software is judged by its most recent version. GitBook in its current form is a proprietary web service. The October 2018 version is open source, but it's also abandonware. VSCodium does exclude the proprietary features of Visual Studio Code, but I don't see how that should disqualify VSCodium from being open source. (I use VSCodium frequently and I am satisfied with its feature set, so I strongly disagree with your claim that it is not usable in a useful manner.) VSCodium is also maintained by a community that is not sponsored by Microsoft, so I don't think it's fair to say that it is intentionally designed to be inferior to Visual Studio Code. We both agree that Visual Studio Code is not open source. Elasticsearch (Elastic License, Server Side Public License) and HashiCorp (Business Source License) have adopted licenses that do not provide the four freedoms, and the software licensed in that way is not open source.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  I tried to deploy GitBook in 2017 IIRC, and left it alone after seeing how it's shared to prevent re-deployment. I didn't know they abandoned the idea of "Looking Like Open Source" in 2018. VSCodium may be open source in theory, but it's designed to be deployed in a less functional fashion than VSCode, more like a "Freemium", hence the "Codium", ringing me like "-ish", or "looks like". It's designed as a funnel. Yes, it's there, and it works, but it funnels users to Microsoft's closed version. Or you can embed it as an editor to your project, but not much more. I'd rather use KATE, Eclipse, Vim, Emacs, etc. Instead of it. Heck even Atom or its current incarnation is better. Zed is also like VSCodium. The tool is "Open Source", with a proprietary backend and egregious data siphoning capabilities. It backstabs you, and being open source changes nothing. I have given Elastic and HashiCorp as examples of companies using open source as a way to get support and traction in the early days, and back-pedaling when things didn't go as their plan. Whether this is calculated or not is another matter, but they look like they didn't fully think it through.
  - commoner 3y ago
    I agree that if open source client software requires a proprietary web service to be used, that software as a whole is not open source. That doesn't mean the test of the four freedoms is insufficient, it simply means that the test needs to be applied to both the client and the server. > VSCodium may be open source in theory, but it's designed to be deployed in a less functional fashion than VSCode, more like a "Freemium", hence the "Codium", ringing me like "-ish", or "looks like". VSCodium is not "designed" to be less functional, since it is a project maintained by developers who are unaffiliated with Microsoft. VSCodium is an application that is "deployed" in the exact same way as Visual Studio Code on the desktop. The name VSCodium is a nod to Chromium, not "freemium".[1] Using the Chrome analogy, Visual Studio Code is like Chrome, proprietary and closed source. Microsoft's "Code - OSS" repo[2] is like Chromium, and serves as a functional open source base for the closed source software with the proprietary client-side features omitted. VSCodium[3] is like Ungoogled Chromium,[4] with both being community projects unaffiliated with Microsoft/Google. VSCodium takes "Code - OSS", strips out the telemetry, and uses the Open VSX Registry[5] for extensions by default instead of Microsoft's proprietary Visual Studio Marketplace. > Or you can embed it as an editor to your project, but not much more. Have you ever used VSCodium? It's a full editor that includes almost all of the features of Visual Studio Code. It does not need to be embedded to be used. > Heck even Atom or its current incarnation is better. You're entitled to your own opinion, but Atom was developed by GitHub, which was acquired by Microsoft. After the acquisition, Microsoft diverted development efforts to Visual Studio Code, and both VSCodium and "Code - OSS" currently run circles around Atom in both performance and features. It doesn't help that Atom was discontinued last year, with the final version having been released in March 2022.[7] [1] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/28 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/28 [2] https://github.com/microsoft/vscode https://github.com/microsoft/vscode [3] https://vscodium.com https://vscodium.com / Source: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium [4] https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium [5] https://open-vsx.org https://open-vsx.org / Source: https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx [6] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/VSCode https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/VSCode [7] https://github.com/atom/atom https://github.com/atom/atom