5 ms·

I hate the recent open-source rise

16 points by jamietanna 5mo ago

turtleyacht 5mo ago
What instead? If not free software, then maybe ONF software: Open{- }source is Not Free.
- jamietanna 5mo ago
  I think using `open source`, and clarifying that it includes non-OSI-approved licenses could work. Alternatively, "source available" is a term that's been used to imply the source is there, but it's not "open source" (which led to the Fair Source folks working on their own naming for it, so as some folks have negative views of "source available")
  - turtleyacht 5mo ago
    What has stuck with me is the phrase "free and open source," which is like, if the two were equivalent, there wouldn't be a need for the distinction. Maybe that was when software binaries could be free but the source was not.
    - jamietanna 5mo ago
      Hah, yes very true! If you've not read up on the background between the two - I'd very much recommend it (and sorry if I'm re-explaining something you understand) With Free Software, it's "free as in freedom", not "free as in gratis". Free Software is generally a bit more strongly biased towards the users of a piece of software, but as businesses started to use it they were a bit unhappy with that, so Open Source came to reduce that a little bit, making it easier for companies to use it, without as many strong protections for a user See also [1] [0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html [1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
    - GuB-42 5mo ago
      There are two big organizations: FSF (Free Software Foundation) and OSI (Open Source Initiative), and while they have similar ideas, they disagree on the details. Free software is more in line with the ideas of the FSF (more idealistic), while open source is more in line with the idea of the OSI (more pragmatic). There is also the term "libre" (meaning "free as in freedom") to distinguish it from software that doesn't cost money.
    - cperciva 5mo ago
      F/OSS is like GNU/Linux; the second part is the part which matters, but the first part keeps getting pushed by noisy people so we put up with it to keep them happy.
cjs_ac 5mo ago
The hyphenation probably stems from the fact that, grammatically, 'open-source' is a compound adjective. The LLMs are probably weighting this over the nature of 'open source' as jargon.
dist-epoch 5mo ago
There is no such thing as "correct" or "incorrect" hyphenation, or for that matter "correct English". Source: linguists > Linguists insist that it’s wrong to designate any kind of English “proper” because language always changes and always has. ... Rather, what is considered proper English is, like so much else, a matter of fashion. Author: > John McWhorter, contributing editor at The New Republic and columnist for The New York Daily News, teaches linguistics, American studies and Western civilization at Columbia University. His latest book is “What Language Is, What It Isn’t and What It Could Be.” https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/a-matter-of-fashion/ https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20...
dataflow 5mo ago
What a weird hill to choose to die on. I wasn't even aware of the trend, but I love it now that I'm aware of it; it makes total sense. If you're a prescriptivist, then open-source should be hyphenated for the same reason full-time, user-friendly, long-term, etc. are. That's how English works. You don't make the rules, and neither does OSI. If you're a descriptivist, then why are is OSI getting a monopoly on everyone's vocabulary? You should be happy to let people use whatever term however they want. You know, freedom and all. You still don't make the rules, and neither does OSI. MW also thinks it's hyphenated, but what do they know, right? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source
- Macha 5mo ago
  > If you're a prescriptivist, then open-source should be hyphenated for the same reason full-time, user-friendly, long-term, etc. are. That's how English works. You don't make the rules, and neither does OSI. Honestly all of these exist in both hyphenated and unhyphenated usage in my experience and for long term and user friendly I’d guess unhyphenated gets more usage
  - dataflow 5mo ago
    >> If you're a prescriptivist, then open-source should be hyphenated for the same reason full-time, user-friendly, long-term, etc. are. That's how English works. > Honestly all of these exist in both hyphenated and unhyphenated usage in my experience ...which is descriptive, not prescriptive.
- evanelias 5mo ago
  Totally agreed. They don't have a trademark, and their superfans have no right to tell people how to capitalize or punctuate the term. I also get the sense that the author has an inherently negative view of non-OSI-approved "source available" licenses -- and in particular the Business Source License, which he uses as a counterexample twice. Yet, OSI cofounder Bruce Perens helped improve that license and specifically said "I feel it’s worthy of my endorsement. The new BSL will be a good way for developers to get paid while eventually making their works Open Source." [1] Why do so many vocal people in the Open Source world have a much more extreme worldview than even an OSI cofounder? [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250629110730/https://perens.com/2017/02/14/bsl-1-1/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250629110730/https://perens.co...
edg5000 5mo ago
Commercial, paid: You must pay money, you get access to service or a binary, or something in between. No source code released. Shareware: You get to download and use the binary for free. Parts of it are missing, you must pay to receive a copy of it. (DOOM, WinRAR, Duke Nukem) Freeware: Binaries are free to use and distribute, complete functionality. Source code not published. (Adobe Acrobat Reader, Draw.io, IrfanView, Google Earth Pro) Open-source: The source code is openly available. Sometimes development also happens in the open. (PHP, Apache HTTPD, Linux, GCC) Open weights: AI model weights released including inference, tokenizer code and chat template. Some info released about how it was made. Training dataset and taining code NOT published. Crawler, scraper, book piracy, distillation methods: NOT published.
periodjet 5mo ago
[flagged]
- squibonpig 5mo ago
  If you think what you're doing is good for anyone to do, it's only logical to nudge people around you to do it.
  - periodjet 5mo ago
    Sure. So how would you feel about a Christian nudging you to stop taking the lord’s name in vain because they believe it’s “good for anyone to do”?
    - squibonpig 5mo ago
      I'd be annoyed and try to get them out of my space or leave myself. Is that bad?
      - periodjet 5mo ago
        Nope. That’s exactly what I’m advocating too.
        squibonpig 5mo ago
        you're advocating they shut up, not that they leave
        periodjet 5mo ago
        No.
- zzrrt 5mo ago
  Where did you get this from? It's not in TFA for me... Edit: Speaking of chosen behaviors pushed on others, do you have a religious impulse to make us all feel as triggered as you are?
johnea 5mo ago
I also hate open source. The derailment of free software to a profit making exercise. As opposed to the sharing of software written by entities that will use the software,, and thus write it for themselves. Apparently, there is only for-sale products, no entity that would use software would ever write it. And even if they did, they would never share it. The purpose of life, the universe and everything: shareholder returns, obviously...

16 points by jamietanna 5mo ago

turtleyacht 5mo ago

What instead? If not free software, then maybe ONF software: Open{- }source is Not Free.

jamietanna 5mo ago
I think using `open source`, and clarifying that it includes non-OSI-approved licenses could work. Alternatively, "source available" is a term that's been used to imply the source is there, but it's not "open source" (which led to the Fair Source folks working on their own naming for it, so as some folks have negative views of "source available")
- turtleyacht 5mo ago
  What has stuck with me is the phrase "free and open source," which is like, if the two were equivalent, there wouldn't be a need for the distinction. Maybe that was when software binaries could be free but the source was not.
  - jamietanna 5mo ago
    Hah, yes very true! If you've not read up on the background between the two - I'd very much recommend it (and sorry if I'm re-explaining something you understand) With Free Software, it's "free as in freedom", not "free as in gratis". Free Software is generally a bit more strongly biased towards the users of a piece of software, but as businesses started to use it they were a bit unhappy with that, so Open Source came to reduce that a little bit, making it easier for companies to use it, without as many strong protections for a user See also [1] [0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html [1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
  - GuB-42 5mo ago
    There are two big organizations: FSF (Free Software Foundation) and OSI (Open Source Initiative), and while they have similar ideas, they disagree on the details. Free software is more in line with the ideas of the FSF (more idealistic), while open source is more in line with the idea of the OSI (more pragmatic). There is also the term "libre" (meaning "free as in freedom") to distinguish it from software that doesn't cost money.
  - cperciva 5mo ago
    F/OSS is like GNU/Linux; the second part is the part which matters, but the first part keeps getting pushed by noisy people so we put up with it to keep them happy.

cjs_ac 5mo ago

The hyphenation probably stems from the fact that, grammatically, 'open-source' is a compound adjective. The LLMs are probably weighting this over the nature of 'open source' as jargon.

dist-epoch 5mo ago

There is no such thing as "correct" or "incorrect" hyphenation, or for that matter "correct English". Source: linguists > Linguists insist that it’s wrong to designate any kind of English “proper” because language always changes and always has. ... Rather, what is considered proper English is, like so much else, a matter of fashion. Author: > John McWhorter, contributing editor at The New Republic and columnist for The New York Daily News, teaches linguistics, American studies and Western civilization at Columbia University. His latest book is “What Language Is, What It Isn’t and What It Could Be.” https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/a-matter-of-fashion/ https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20...

dataflow 5mo ago

What a weird hill to choose to die on. I wasn't even aware of the trend, but I love it now that I'm aware of it; it makes total sense. If you're a prescriptivist, then open-source should be hyphenated for the same reason full-time, user-friendly, long-term, etc. are. That's how English works. You don't make the rules, and neither does OSI. If you're a descriptivist, then why are is OSI getting a monopoly on everyone's vocabulary? You should be happy to let people use whatever term however they want. You know, freedom and all. You still don't make the rules, and neither does OSI. MW also thinks it's hyphenated, but what do they know, right? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source

Macha 5mo ago
> If you're a prescriptivist, then open-source should be hyphenated for the same reason full-time, user-friendly, long-term, etc. are. That's how English works. You don't make the rules, and neither does OSI. Honestly all of these exist in both hyphenated and unhyphenated usage in my experience and for long term and user friendly I’d guess unhyphenated gets more usage
- dataflow 5mo ago
  >> If you're a prescriptivist, then open-source should be hyphenated for the same reason full-time, user-friendly, long-term, etc. are. That's how English works. > Honestly all of these exist in both hyphenated and unhyphenated usage in my experience ...which is descriptive, not prescriptive.
evanelias 5mo ago
Totally agreed. They don't have a trademark, and their superfans have no right to tell people how to capitalize or punctuate the term. I also get the sense that the author has an inherently negative view of non-OSI-approved "source available" licenses -- and in particular the Business Source License, which he uses as a counterexample twice. Yet, OSI cofounder Bruce Perens helped improve that license and specifically said "I feel it’s worthy of my endorsement. The new BSL will be a good way for developers to get paid while eventually making their works Open Source." [1] Why do so many vocal people in the Open Source world have a much more extreme worldview than even an OSI cofounder? [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250629110730/https://perens.com/2017/02/14/bsl-1-1/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250629110730/https://perens.co...

edg5000 5mo ago

Commercial, paid: You must pay money, you get access to service or a binary, or something in between. No source code released. Shareware: You get to download and use the binary for free. Parts of it are missing, you must pay to receive a copy of it. (DOOM, WinRAR, Duke Nukem) Freeware: Binaries are free to use and distribute, complete functionality. Source code not published. (Adobe Acrobat Reader, Draw.io, IrfanView, Google Earth Pro) Open-source: The source code is openly available. Sometimes development also happens in the open. (PHP, Apache HTTPD, Linux, GCC) Open weights: AI model weights released including inference, tokenizer code and chat template. Some info released about how it was made. Training dataset and taining code NOT published. Crawler, scraper, book piracy, distillation methods: NOT published.

periodjet 5mo ago

[flagged]

squibonpig 5mo ago
If you think what you're doing is good for anyone to do, it's only logical to nudge people around you to do it.
- periodjet 5mo ago
  Sure. So how would you feel about a Christian nudging you to stop taking the lord’s name in vain because they believe it’s “good for anyone to do”?
  - squibonpig 5mo ago
    I'd be annoyed and try to get them out of my space or leave myself. Is that bad?
    - periodjet 5mo ago
      Nope. That’s exactly what I’m advocating too.
      - squibonpig 5mo ago
        you're advocating they shut up, not that they leave
        periodjet 5mo ago
        No.
zzrrt 5mo ago
Where did you get this from? It's not in TFA for me... Edit: Speaking of chosen behaviors pushed on others, do you have a religious impulse to make us all feel as triggered as you are?

johnea 5mo ago

I also hate open source. The derailment of free software to a profit making exercise. As opposed to the sharing of software written by entities that will use the software,, and thus write it for themselves. Apparently, there is only for-sale products, no entity that would use software would ever write it. And even if they did, they would never share it. The purpose of life, the universe and everything: shareholder returns, obviously...