6 ms·

I'm not sure the title is the correct response. As in "stop making software licenses" is not the problem. Clearly any business can license their software any w

I'm not sure the title is the correct response. As in "stop making software licenses" is not the problem. Clearly any business can license their software any way they like. What caused the poster some confusion is that it was marketed as an "open source" product. Once he determined it was not an OSI approved license then that should be the end of it. It's not Open Source. period. By all means call them out on that - lots of people and companies are not licensing experts, and need guidance. I've helped people with this in the past and encouraged them to change to actual Open Source licenses that are compatible with their goals, and the goals of their community. If anything the real headline should be "stop calling your product open source when it doesn't have an open source license". [To be clear - I produce commercial software under not-open-source licenses. I've got no objection to folk doing that. I even ship the source with the product, and accept contributions back. But I don't call it "open source" because it's not "Open Source". It's something, sure, but it's not Open Source.]

leni536 2y ago
I think the author would have been fine with a "source available" license that allowed them to contribute back the usual way (fork + PR).
alkonaut 2y ago
Yeah The Reference Source License is a "source available" license. It's not "open source" in the OSI sense that it can be contributed to or used for any other purpose. For a security product, "source available" is MUCH better than nothing at all (closed, proprietary). Not sure why these people chose the Microsoft reference license for their product, but I guess if you are in a hurry and you need an example of a source available license then I'd also consider just grabbing one from a megacorp that probably had armies of lawyers go over it.
hnlmorg 2y ago
I think your take is a much more levelheaded view of events than the authors. I completely agree with you that we shouldn’t be restricting how people choose to license their code. And agree that the real issue is the marketing: ie people calling something “open source” when it’s actually “source available to read”. I see quite a few organisations play this game, like Obsidian. I’ve seen highly skilled and intelligent engineers fall for the trap of calling Obsidian open source because they can inspect the code of the Electon app; forgetting that doesn’t actually grant them a license to do anything with the code. Like yourself, I have no qualms if an organisation wants to build proprietary / for profit stuff. I understand that means they might not even want to share their code. But what I do object to is when those organisations then try to gain some open source “street cred” for something that is proprietary.
- Sebb767 2y ago
  > I’ve seen highly skilled and intelligent engineers fall for the trap of calling Obsidian open source because they can inspect the code of the Electon app; forgetting that doesn’t actually grant them a license to do anything with the code. That's because the terminology is pretty confusing, doubly so for ESL people. If you'd never had the whole open software vs. free software debate, it's easy to think that "open source" means "source code available", as this is pretty much in line with the direct reading of the phrase.
  - klez 2y ago
    The term "open source" has had a precise meaning in software since at least 1998. It's only recently that people have started bickering about it being confusing. Exactly when these "source available" clauses started popping up more frequently and people started noticing that some of the previous open source business models are not compatible with a SaaS world.
    - lifthrasiir 2y ago
      To be clear, only claimed exactly so by open source (and not free software or general F/OSS) proponents. The term was also applied to non-software licenses with related but substantially different meanings.
      - ensignavenger 2y ago
        There was no significant use of the term "open source" applying to software prior to the OSI. Contrast that with Free Software, which was a term in common use before the FSF. The idea that "Free Software" is a more precisely defined concept that Open Source is simply not true.
        lifthrasiir 2y ago
        > Contrast that with Free Software, which was a term in common use before the FSF. I believe a term "freeware" was much better known even back then. Also, I do think "free software" is also a badly chosen term for a different reason. But we are only talking about the term "open source", so... "Open source" is a badly chosen term because it gives too much weight to the adjective "open". There is no inherent notion of "openness" about source code, so people would instead imagine something that is related to source code but can be thought to be "open". That's why "open" source was heavily associated with "open" governance even though the definition speaks nothing about governance. This confusion is pretty much intentional by the way, as an earlier term "free software" was thought to alienate companies.
christkv 2y ago
I vaguely remember someone calling these kind of licenses open code or open access code instead of open source.
- fragmede 2y ago
  source available
tonyedgecombe 2y ago
>It's not Open Source. period. Does the OSI own a trademark on the term "Open Source"?
- jampekka 2y ago
  They tried but USPTO declined to grant it. https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.php https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
- Y_Y 2y ago
  Afaict they do not, only terms like "OSI approved" are trademarked. https://opensource.org/trademark-guidelines#Open_Source_Initiative_Trademark_Policy https://opensource.org/trademark-guidelines#Open_Source_Init...
darby_nine 2y ago
When did people start taking "open source" as a label seriously? The term means nearly nothing in material terms about what you can actually do with the source code. Certainly if you can build a business off it without distributing the source it's not very useful and certainly not much more "open source" than throwing proprietary code on github.
- bruce511 2y ago
  >> When did people start taking "open source" as a label seriously? In the late 90's. >> The term means nearly nothing in material terms about what you can actually do with the source code. correct. The term means nothing in and of itself. The license determines what you can do with the code. there are a bunch of licenses that conform to the OSI definition of Open Source. If a company claims to be "open source", but then does not fit the definition of Open Source then they should expect some push-back.
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    Sure, but the OSI does not have meaningful values. Why do you giving them credence?
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      Be that as it may, it’s still something to be aware of.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Enterprises typically care about the OSI definition of Open Source to the t, only allowing exceptions like Sqlite.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    sqlite is public domain, how is that not OSI approved?
CrimsonRain 2y ago
who died and made OSI the sole authority? Closed/Open, Free/Paid are orthogonal. That's why a term called FOSS exists.
- klez 2y ago
  The fact that they coined and defined the term in relation to software in the first place, I'd say.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    They had already lost control of the term by 1999 when they tried to trademark it: https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.php https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
    - klez 2y ago
      I'm not sure I understand the reasoning that "no trademark" == "no authority". Taxonomists don't have a trademark on "Canis familiaris" but we tend to respect their opinion on what is or isn't a "Canis familiaris". If someone points to a dingo and tells me "that's a Canis familiaris", I say "it isn't, according to taxonomists" and they told me "who died and made taxonomists the sole authority" I would raise an eyebrow.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- lproven 2y ago
  > who died and made OSI the sole authority? I have often thought the same recently. > That's why a term called FOSS exists. And that is a key part of the problem: conflating FS (Free Software) with OS (Open Source) to give F(OS)S. The thing is that Free software and Open Source _don't_ quite mean the same thing, but we treat them like they do. They are close but not identical. Also see the recent kerfuffle about RHEL and CentOS. Free software: do whatever you want with it, including sell it, but give your users the source code. The GPL is a FS license not an OS licence. Not the world. Not open to all. The GPL 1/2/3 etc only says, clearly and distinctly, users. If you sell your free software, then it's only the customers that get the source, and that is 100% fine and OK. OS is a different emphasis: it was designed to appeal to companies, businessmen and managers. You get the source, so we are giving you control, agency: you can't have it stolen from you. But it was phrased in terms of sharing and openness. That's what OS means, because the OSI says it is. So BSL licenses say "you can have the source, and you can contribute back changes, but we still own it, and you can't use it in prod without paying or re-sell it." That's a restriction of use. That's neither OS nor FS. Whereas RH's use is 100% FS compliant but gets the OS folks annoyed. But OS is not the same as FS. What RH is doing with RHEL is FS but not OS. It's not open to the world but the GPL never said it had to be. I don't know what the best answer is here. I wonder if it's time for a new term which leans on the English primary meaning of "free", as in at no cost, gratis. "This software is free to get, free to use, and free to fork, but only so long as you do not charge for whatever purposes you employ it. If you obtain revenue from running it, supplying its output, modifying it, you sell products with it built in, or any other revenue-generating operation you must pay back X% of your revenues/profits/whatever to the creators. This also applies to downstream modified versions." IANAL. A lawyer could do much better, I am completely sure. It might not be easy but I suspect that there is a way.
atlaspooryorick 2y ago
And completely non-legal devs stop trying to write software licenses. You talk to the average dev and they've no idea what a license grant is, the difference between copyright and licenses. Which is fair enough, but any custom made license is extremely unlikely to be written in a way that it can be enforced when need....
dustingetz 2y ago
why not call an OSI approved license “OSI approved license”?
- FinnKuhn 2y ago
  Because 90% of people would have no idea what that means. Open source on the other hand is usually something many people have at least heard about or read somewhere.
notfed 2y ago
> Once he determined it was not an OSI approved license then that should be the end of it. It's not Open Source. period. Where in OSI's "Open Source Definition" [1] does it say a license must be approved by OSI to be Open Source? If that was really part of the definition, they could have had a much shorter definition! Another thing I find funny is that CC0 isn't "OSI approved" either, because of something about patents. But strangely, the "Definition" never mentions patents. But CC0 is not approved, so apparently CC0 is not open source. [1] https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
buu700 2y ago
Pretty much this. Using the term "open source" (rather than "shared source", "public source", or "source available") was a good faith mistake, and we fixed that once it was pointed out. Beyond that, I'm not really sure what the purpose of this post is except to complain about the fact that commercial software exists.

leni536 2y ago

I think the author would have been fine with a "source available" license that allowed them to contribute back the usual way (fork + PR).

alkonaut 2y ago

Yeah The Reference Source License is a "source available" license. It's not "open source" in the OSI sense that it can be contributed to or used for any other purpose. For a security product, "source available" is MUCH better than nothing at all (closed, proprietary). Not sure why these people chose the Microsoft reference license for their product, but I guess if you are in a hurry and you need an example of a source available license then I'd also consider just grabbing one from a megacorp that probably had armies of lawyers go over it.

hnlmorg 2y ago

I think your take is a much more levelheaded view of events than the authors. I completely agree with you that we shouldn’t be restricting how people choose to license their code. And agree that the real issue is the marketing: ie people calling something “open source” when it’s actually “source available to read”. I see quite a few organisations play this game, like Obsidian. I’ve seen highly skilled and intelligent engineers fall for the trap of calling Obsidian open source because they can inspect the code of the Electon app; forgetting that doesn’t actually grant them a license to do anything with the code. Like yourself, I have no qualms if an organisation wants to build proprietary / for profit stuff. I understand that means they might not even want to share their code. But what I do object to is when those organisations then try to gain some open source “street cred” for something that is proprietary.

Sebb767 2y ago
> I’ve seen highly skilled and intelligent engineers fall for the trap of calling Obsidian open source because they can inspect the code of the Electon app; forgetting that doesn’t actually grant them a license to do anything with the code. That's because the terminology is pretty confusing, doubly so for ESL people. If you'd never had the whole open software vs. free software debate, it's easy to think that "open source" means "source code available", as this is pretty much in line with the direct reading of the phrase.
- klez 2y ago
  The term "open source" has had a precise meaning in software since at least 1998. It's only recently that people have started bickering about it being confusing. Exactly when these "source available" clauses started popping up more frequently and people started noticing that some of the previous open source business models are not compatible with a SaaS world.
  - lifthrasiir 2y ago
    To be clear, only claimed exactly so by open source (and not free software or general F/OSS) proponents. The term was also applied to non-software licenses with related but substantially different meanings.
    - ensignavenger 2y ago
      There was no significant use of the term "open source" applying to software prior to the OSI. Contrast that with Free Software, which was a term in common use before the FSF. The idea that "Free Software" is a more precisely defined concept that Open Source is simply not true.
      - lifthrasiir 2y ago
        > Contrast that with Free Software, which was a term in common use before the FSF. I believe a term "freeware" was much better known even back then. Also, I do think "free software" is also a badly chosen term for a different reason. But we are only talking about the term "open source", so... "Open source" is a badly chosen term because it gives too much weight to the adjective "open". There is no inherent notion of "openness" about source code, so people would instead imagine something that is related to source code but can be thought to be "open". That's why "open" source was heavily associated with "open" governance even though the definition speaks nothing about governance. This confusion is pretty much intentional by the way, as an earlier term "free software" was thought to alienate companies.

christkv 2y ago

I vaguely remember someone calling these kind of licenses open code or open access code instead of open source.

fragmede 2y ago
source available

tonyedgecombe 2y ago

>It's not Open Source. period. Does the OSI own a trademark on the term "Open Source"?

jampekka 2y ago
They tried but USPTO declined to grant it. https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.php https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
Y_Y 2y ago
Afaict they do not, only terms like "OSI approved" are trademarked. https://opensource.org/trademark-guidelines#Open_Source_Initiative_Trademark_Policy https://opensource.org/trademark-guidelines#Open_Source_Init...

darby_nine 2y ago

When did people start taking "open source" as a label seriously? The term means nearly nothing in material terms about what you can actually do with the source code. Certainly if you can build a business off it without distributing the source it's not very useful and certainly not much more "open source" than throwing proprietary code on github.

bruce511 2y ago
>> When did people start taking "open source" as a label seriously? In the late 90's. >> The term means nearly nothing in material terms about what you can actually do with the source code. correct. The term means nothing in and of itself. The license determines what you can do with the code. there are a bunch of licenses that conform to the OSI definition of Open Source. If a company claims to be "open source", but then does not fit the definition of Open Source then they should expect some push-back.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  Sure, but the OSI does not have meaningful values. Why do you giving them credence?
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    Be that as it may, it’s still something to be aware of.
actionfromafar 2y ago
Enterprises typically care about the OSI definition of Open Source to the t, only allowing exceptions like Sqlite.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  sqlite is public domain, how is that not OSI approved?

CrimsonRain 2y ago

who died and made OSI the sole authority? Closed/Open, Free/Paid are orthogonal. That's why a term called FOSS exists.

klez 2y ago
The fact that they coined and defined the term in relation to software in the first place, I'd say.
- lolinder 2y ago
  They had already lost control of the term by 1999 when they tried to trademark it: https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.php https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
  - klez 2y ago
    I'm not sure I understand the reasoning that "no trademark" == "no authority". Taxonomists don't have a trademark on "Canis familiaris" but we tend to respect their opinion on what is or isn't a "Canis familiaris". If someone points to a dingo and tells me "that's a Canis familiaris", I say "it isn't, according to taxonomists" and they told me "who died and made taxonomists the sole authority" I would raise an eyebrow.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
lproven 2y ago
> who died and made OSI the sole authority? I have often thought the same recently. > That's why a term called FOSS exists. And that is a key part of the problem: conflating FS (Free Software) with OS (Open Source) to give F(OS)S. The thing is that Free software and Open Source _don't_ quite mean the same thing, but we treat them like they do. They are close but not identical. Also see the recent kerfuffle about RHEL and CentOS. Free software: do whatever you want with it, including sell it, but give your users the source code. The GPL is a FS license not an OS licence. Not the world. Not open to all. The GPL 1/2/3 etc only says, clearly and distinctly, users. If you sell your free software, then it's only the customers that get the source, and that is 100% fine and OK. OS is a different emphasis: it was designed to appeal to companies, businessmen and managers. You get the source, so we are giving you control, agency: you can't have it stolen from you. But it was phrased in terms of sharing and openness. That's what OS means, because the OSI says it is. So BSL licenses say "you can have the source, and you can contribute back changes, but we still own it, and you can't use it in prod without paying or re-sell it." That's a restriction of use. That's neither OS nor FS. Whereas RH's use is 100% FS compliant but gets the OS folks annoyed. But OS is not the same as FS. What RH is doing with RHEL is FS but not OS. It's not open to the world but the GPL never said it had to be. I don't know what the best answer is here. I wonder if it's time for a new term which leans on the English primary meaning of "free", as in at no cost, gratis. "This software is free to get, free to use, and free to fork, but only so long as you do not charge for whatever purposes you employ it. If you obtain revenue from running it, supplying its output, modifying it, you sell products with it built in, or any other revenue-generating operation you must pay back X% of your revenues/profits/whatever to the creators. This also applies to downstream modified versions." IANAL. A lawyer could do much better, I am completely sure. It might not be easy but I suspect that there is a way.

atlaspooryorick 2y ago

And completely non-legal devs stop trying to write software licenses. You talk to the average dev and they've no idea what a license grant is, the difference between copyright and licenses. Which is fair enough, but any custom made license is extremely unlikely to be written in a way that it can be enforced when need....

dustingetz 2y ago

why not call an OSI approved license “OSI approved license”?

FinnKuhn 2y ago
Because 90% of people would have no idea what that means. Open source on the other hand is usually something many people have at least heard about or read somewhere.

notfed 2y ago

> Once he determined it was not an OSI approved license then that should be the end of it. It's not Open Source. period. Where in OSI's "Open Source Definition" [1] does it say a license must be approved by OSI to be Open Source? If that was really part of the definition, they could have had a much shorter definition! Another thing I find funny is that CC0 isn't "OSI approved" either, because of something about patents. But strangely, the "Definition" never mentions patents. But CC0 is not approved, so apparently CC0 is not open source. [1] https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd

buu700 2y ago

Pretty much this. Using the term "open source" (rather than "shared source", "public source", or "source available") was a good faith mistake, and we fixed that once it was pointed out. Beyond that, I'm not really sure what the purpose of this post is except to complain about the fact that commercial software exists.