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They can use whatever licence they want. It's their software. They should only call it open source if they use an OSI-approved licence. Doing otherwise is openw

They can use whatever licence they want. It's their software. They should only call it open source if they use an OSI-approved licence. Doing otherwise is openwashing and is frowned upon.

squigz 3y ago
I wonder if one reason particular groups of people have a hard time getting others to care about some issues is this tendency to make up words in order to make things sound more malicious than they are. Usually it just ends up sounding silly.
tcfhgj 3y ago
It would be open washing if you couldn't look at the source code, but you can.
- alexvoda 3y ago
  Open source does not mean you can look at the source code. Open source is defined by the OSI. If it is not using and OSI-approved license and claims to be open source it is open washing. Call it shared source or something else. This is a long since settled debate.
  - tcfhgj 3y ago
    Yes, it does. It's the opposite of closed source, and the meaning is implied by the word open. OSI isn't authoritative of the term.
    - alexvoda 3y ago
      This debate has been had many many times before and you are simply wrong. Your effort is malicious. Regardless of what other uses the word open has/had, "open source" was defined by OSI and they are authoritative over the term.
      - tcfhgj 3y ago
        Malicious is the attempt to restrict open source to floss and start a shitstorm about open source but not floss software, because it prevents transparency for software where floss isn't an option. If I define climate neutral as climate positive, climate neutral doesn't become climate positive nor do I get authority of the term climate neutral.
        alexvoda 3y ago
        And yet that is absolutely the kind of bullshit you are pulling. Thank you for denouncing yourself. Some terms were defined by a community and their use defended. Others were defined by a community, appropriated by others, distorted by others and subsequently abandoned by the original community. And yet others, were abandoned and then reclaimed by the original community. "Open Source" is in the first category, defined by OSI and defended by the FLOSS community. It is actively being defended, and fish much bigger than you have failed to topple the community.
        tcfhgj 3y ago
        "And yet that is absolutely the kind of bullshit you are pulling. " Nope it's what you and OSI try to do.
    - wokwokwok 3y ago
      I honestly don’t care if it is or not, but this has been discussed to death with regard to unreal and the consensus has been (from epic) to consistently refer to the source as “available on GitHub” not as “open source”, because that gives people an incorrect impression of the permissiveness of the license. Is this a hill you really want to die on? It doesn’t matter at all. The “can see code” = “must be open source” argument is stupid because it’s entirely opinion based. You cannot be right about it. It depends what you choose to define “open source” as. If you define it as some arbitrary thing (eg. I can read the source code) then of course you’re right. …but you can’t force other people to accept your arbitrary definition. You can only have an opinion about it. Same as anyone else. Is it really worth the argument? Source available is unambiguous, being explicit (“source can be download from GitHub”) I means you don’t have to waste your time on arguments like this for, what seems, truely trivial reasons.
      - tcfhgj 3y ago
        "because that gives people an incorrect impression of the permissiveness of the license" How does it? "Source available is unambiguous" It's not, because it could be hidden behind a pay wall.
        alexvoda 3y ago
        If it's behind a pay wall it's not available, it's closed. But you may call source-available software whatever you want, just not open source unless it's under and OSI-approved license. You can use any words other than the phrase "open source" to be as unambiguous as you want.
        wokwokwok 3y ago
        I don’t understand. If you feel it’s not explicit enough be more explicit (source is available from xxx of you login or whatever). If you want a legal opinion, get a lawyer, that’s what they do. If you just want to do what’s “normal”, take a successful project (eg. Unreal) and do what they do. It seems like a total non issue.
  - Sytten 3y ago
    That is not a settled debate IMO, even Stallman said as much. Sure its not FOSS / FLOSS, but trying to push for a position where open source doesn't mean I can see the code is very much not agreed by everybody. EDIT: See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
    - alexvoda 3y ago
      Just like Microsofts opinion didn't matter whenever they tried to dilute the meaning of open source, and just like MongoDB's and others opinion didn't matter, your opinion doesn't matter. Microsoft is far more convincing than you and they did not win this argument. Microsoft gave up and now only calls OSI-approved licenses open source. Open Source means OSI-approved. If you can read the source code but it's not OSI-approved, than it's source-available or shared source or something else.
  - vasco 3y ago
    A judge saying something once in the history of the world doesn't make it so that you can force language on others. Most people that I've interacted that work in software refer to "source available" as open source in every day speech, and unless they were preparing legal documents that's what they'd say. If you include normal people that don't work in software, then even more likely the usage is the one you're complaining about. You sound like this: https://stallman-copypasta.github.io/ https://stallman-copypasta.github.io/
    - 6510 3y ago
      > Most people that I've interacted that work in software refer to "source available" as open source Proprietary software and closed source refer to the same thing. Most people you've interacted are wrong. sorry...
      - vasco 3y ago
        Luckily I didn't mention either "closed source" or "proprietary software" in my comment. I mentioned that people colloquially use "open source" to refer to any code base that has source available to read. Maybe there's some hidden point you're trying to make by associating these concepts but it'd be easier if you said it plainly. Other than that I think you find that people in real life don't tend to be exact in their use of language all the time, and calling understandable imprecisions "wrong" tends to decrease the number of friends you get.
        alexvoda 3y ago
        People distort words to the point of meaningless unless the use of those words are defended. "Open Source" is a term that is actively being defended. The history of the term is very clear. The term was coined by Christine Peterson in a group session in 1998 with Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann, and Eric S. Raymond. Months later the OSI was created by the same people in order to manage that definition. There is nothing unclear here. "Open source" is defined by OSI and it has been defined by them from the very start. If communities let others distort words, those words loose their meaning. As a well known example, the word "woke" which has long been abandoned by the community that coined it. "Open source" is an actively defended term by the organisation that originally defined it and the community around them.

They can use whatever licence they want. It's their software. They should only call it open source if they use an OSI-approved licence. Doing otherwise is openwashing and is frowned upon.

squigz 3y ago

I wonder if one reason particular groups of people have a hard time getting others to care about some issues is this tendency to make up words in order to make things sound more malicious than they are. Usually it just ends up sounding silly.

tcfhgj 3y ago

It would be open washing if you couldn't look at the source code, but you can.

alexvoda 3y ago
Open source does not mean you can look at the source code. Open source is defined by the OSI. If it is not using and OSI-approved license and claims to be open source it is open washing. Call it shared source or something else. This is a long since settled debate.
- tcfhgj 3y ago
  Yes, it does. It's the opposite of closed source, and the meaning is implied by the word open. OSI isn't authoritative of the term.
  - alexvoda 3y ago
    This debate has been had many many times before and you are simply wrong. Your effort is malicious. Regardless of what other uses the word open has/had, "open source" was defined by OSI and they are authoritative over the term.
    - tcfhgj 3y ago
      Malicious is the attempt to restrict open source to floss and start a shitstorm about open source but not floss software, because it prevents transparency for software where floss isn't an option. If I define climate neutral as climate positive, climate neutral doesn't become climate positive nor do I get authority of the term climate neutral.
      - alexvoda 3y ago
        And yet that is absolutely the kind of bullshit you are pulling. Thank you for denouncing yourself. Some terms were defined by a community and their use defended. Others were defined by a community, appropriated by others, distorted by others and subsequently abandoned by the original community. And yet others, were abandoned and then reclaimed by the original community. "Open Source" is in the first category, defined by OSI and defended by the FLOSS community. It is actively being defended, and fish much bigger than you have failed to topple the community.
        tcfhgj 3y ago
        "And yet that is absolutely the kind of bullshit you are pulling. " Nope it's what you and OSI try to do.
  - wokwokwok 3y ago
    I honestly don’t care if it is or not, but this has been discussed to death with regard to unreal and the consensus has been (from epic) to consistently refer to the source as “available on GitHub” not as “open source”, because that gives people an incorrect impression of the permissiveness of the license. Is this a hill you really want to die on? It doesn’t matter at all. The “can see code” = “must be open source” argument is stupid because it’s entirely opinion based. You cannot be right about it. It depends what you choose to define “open source” as. If you define it as some arbitrary thing (eg. I can read the source code) then of course you’re right. …but you can’t force other people to accept your arbitrary definition. You can only have an opinion about it. Same as anyone else. Is it really worth the argument? Source available is unambiguous, being explicit (“source can be download from GitHub”) I means you don’t have to waste your time on arguments like this for, what seems, truely trivial reasons.
    - tcfhgj 3y ago
      "because that gives people an incorrect impression of the permissiveness of the license" How does it? "Source available is unambiguous" It's not, because it could be hidden behind a pay wall.
      - alexvoda 3y ago
        If it's behind a pay wall it's not available, it's closed. But you may call source-available software whatever you want, just not open source unless it's under and OSI-approved license. You can use any words other than the phrase "open source" to be as unambiguous as you want.
      - wokwokwok 3y ago
        I don’t understand. If you feel it’s not explicit enough be more explicit (source is available from xxx of you login or whatever). If you want a legal opinion, get a lawyer, that’s what they do. If you just want to do what’s “normal”, take a successful project (eg. Unreal) and do what they do. It seems like a total non issue.
- Sytten 3y ago
  That is not a settled debate IMO, even Stallman said as much. Sure its not FOSS / FLOSS, but trying to push for a position where open source doesn't mean I can see the code is very much not agreed by everybody. EDIT: See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
  - alexvoda 3y ago
    Just like Microsofts opinion didn't matter whenever they tried to dilute the meaning of open source, and just like MongoDB's and others opinion didn't matter, your opinion doesn't matter. Microsoft is far more convincing than you and they did not win this argument. Microsoft gave up and now only calls OSI-approved licenses open source. Open Source means OSI-approved. If you can read the source code but it's not OSI-approved, than it's source-available or shared source or something else.
- vasco 3y ago
  A judge saying something once in the history of the world doesn't make it so that you can force language on others. Most people that I've interacted that work in software refer to "source available" as open source in every day speech, and unless they were preparing legal documents that's what they'd say. If you include normal people that don't work in software, then even more likely the usage is the one you're complaining about. You sound like this: https://stallman-copypasta.github.io/ https://stallman-copypasta.github.io/
  - 6510 3y ago
    > Most people that I've interacted that work in software refer to "source available" as open source Proprietary software and closed source refer to the same thing. Most people you've interacted are wrong. sorry...
    - vasco 3y ago
      Luckily I didn't mention either "closed source" or "proprietary software" in my comment. I mentioned that people colloquially use "open source" to refer to any code base that has source available to read. Maybe there's some hidden point you're trying to make by associating these concepts but it'd be easier if you said it plainly. Other than that I think you find that people in real life don't tend to be exact in their use of language all the time, and calling understandable imprecisions "wrong" tends to decrease the number of friends you get.
      - alexvoda 3y ago
        People distort words to the point of meaningless unless the use of those words are defended. "Open Source" is a term that is actively being defended. The history of the term is very clear. The term was coined by Christine Peterson in a group session in 1998 with Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann, and Eric S. Raymond. Months later the OSI was created by the same people in order to manage that definition. There is nothing unclear here. "Open source" is defined by OSI and it has been defined by them from the very start. If communities let others distort words, those words loose their meaning. As a well known example, the word "woke" which has long been abandoned by the community that coined it. "Open source" is an actively defended term by the organisation that originally defined it and the community around them.