11 ms·
The limitation to non-commercial use means it's not quite 'open source' in the common meaning established by the Open Source Initiative. (Discrimination against
by gojomo 14y ago
The limitation to non-commercial use means it's not quite 'open source' in the common meaning established by the Open Source Initiative. (Discrimination against a 'field of endeavor', such as business use, is not allowable under their definition.)
- fredsanford 14y agoThe no commercial use thing is Microsoft speak for "We couldn't figure out how to make money with it, but if you do, give it to me." :P
- sadga 14y agocough http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/
- lucian1900 14y agoIt's not open source by any stretch of the imagination. The Microsoft blog is quite simply lying.
- frabcus 14y agoThanks both for pointing this out - I've left a comment on the blog post asking him to change "open source" to "shared source" (which is what I thought Microsoft call such visible but not open code). I'll give Leonardo the benefit of the doubt that he's just made an error for now...
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoOr the poster doesn't understand what open source really is, or their definition of open source is different from yours. Honestly, GPL screws up commercial use almost as much as a non commercial use restrictions. But I totally agree that open source are not the right words to use in this situation. Full disclosure, I work for Microsoft.
- throwaway64 14y agoOpen Source a term with a single, specific definition. It is damaging to the ideas of FLOSS to allow stuff like "shared source" to be called open source. EDIT: Removed reference to "open source" being trademarked, it is in fact not, apologies for the confusion.
- hermanhermitage 14y agoNo. This is a fantasy. A trademark does not take ownership of general words or phrases from the people.
- skrebbel 14y agoCorrect. A trademark is just that: a mark used in trade. It does not come with the ability to define a standard definition for the mark's meaning, other than "~ is a trademark of $ORGANISATION". Also, is "open source" really trademarked? Wtf? That's like a beef promo organisation trademarking "well done".
- throwaway64 14y agoThe problem with this idea when applied to this case is the motivations of people wishing to use some alternate definition. There is a real profit motive in being able to call stuff "open source" when it doesn't grant its users the same kind of freedoms the BSD or the GPL license, etc, do. If you allow stuff like "shared source" to be called open source, you reduce the term to a meaningless buzzword, like how the term "open" is frequently abused. citing trademarks is a heavy handed approach, but many parties with a profit motive don't care about anything except strict legality. This is relevant in particular to this blog because Microsoft has a history of attempting to change what the term means http://opensource.org/node/280 http://opensource.org/node/280
- nitrogen 14y agoA trademark does not take ownership of general words or phrases from the people. Except when that trademark is "Windows" or "Office" or "Word".
- andyjohnson0 14y agoWhy do you think they are "simply lying", rather than (for example) being simply mistaken?
- lucian1900 14y agoBecause they've been trying to dilute the term "open source" for quite a while now.
- tptacek 14y ago1997 called and &c &c. Microsoft could give a shit about damaging "open source".
- tptacek 14y agoThose bastards. How dare they publish their source code on terms we don't agree with.
- dmm 14y agoThe post you are replying to and its parent are not disagreeing with the terms the source code was published under. Go read them again and find where they disagree with the terms. They do disagree with the way those terms are _described_. "Open source" has a fairly well defined meaning and that meaning excludes a license that restricts use based on "field of endeavour", which the license in question does. This is also completely different from the GPL. The GPL does not restrict commercial use. I can use the GPLed linux kernel to serve up commercial websites all day. Presumably I could not use Z3 to serve a commercial service.