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The problem is that companies like Microsoft created licenses that are semi-open to attract kudos. If the FOSS community changed “open” with “public” then Micro

The problem is that companies like Microsoft created licenses that are semi-open to attract kudos. If the FOSS community changed “open” with “public” then Microsoft et al will then just move onto calling things like Reference Source License a “public source” license as well. The only way around this problem is to play these organisations at their own game and trade mark any such public source term. But that’s going to be expensive to enforce, and who’s going to want to pay for the lawyers?

klez 2y ago
> The only way around this problem is to play these organisations at their own game and trade mark any such public source term. But that’s going to be expensive to enforce, and who’s going to want to pay for the lawyers? Well, that's what the FSF and OSI are for.
- hnlmorg 2y ago
  Their funds aren’t limitless. They don’t even have the resources to fight a GPL violations. Never mind any new hypothetical responsibilities.
lloeki 2y ago
> The problem is that companies like Microsoft created licenses that are semi-open to attract kudos That's the kind of move I squarely put under the "disingenuous" category. > If the FOSS community changed “open” with “public” That's not what I meant, what I meant is that the technically incorrect use of "open source" by MS&al would better be named "public source" / PSS. "source available" / SAS just doesn't have the same pattern/ring to it, which I presume is part of why it does not catch on. The humble suggestion here kind of rides on the easily understood idea that making, say, a GitHub repo "public" doesn't make the code magically FOSS. Then, by contrast with "public", "open source" gets a bit more of a specific meaning.
- hnlmorg 2y ago
  But the entire reason companies misuse “open source” is so that people are confused into thinking those companies are supporting FOSS by giving back to the community when in fact it’s all just marketing trickery.

klez 2y ago

> The only way around this problem is to play these organisations at their own game and trade mark any such public source term. But that’s going to be expensive to enforce, and who’s going to want to pay for the lawyers? Well, that's what the FSF and OSI are for.

hnlmorg 2y ago
Their funds aren’t limitless. They don’t even have the resources to fight a GPL violations. Never mind any new hypothetical responsibilities.

lloeki 2y ago

> The problem is that companies like Microsoft created licenses that are semi-open to attract kudos That's the kind of move I squarely put under the "disingenuous" category. > If the FOSS community changed “open” with “public” That's not what I meant, what I meant is that the technically incorrect use of "open source" by MS&al would better be named "public source" / PSS. "source available" / SAS just doesn't have the same pattern/ring to it, which I presume is part of why it does not catch on. The humble suggestion here kind of rides on the easily understood idea that making, say, a GitHub repo "public" doesn't make the code magically FOSS. Then, by contrast with "public", "open source" gets a bit more of a specific meaning.

hnlmorg 2y ago
But the entire reason companies misuse “open source” is so that people are confused into thinking those companies are supporting FOSS by giving back to the community when in fact it’s all just marketing trickery.