3 ms·

Not really. Well, you can of course do that but you can't really call that "open source". "open source" has a set meaning that a lot of people spent a lot of ti

Not really. Well, you can of course do that but you can't really call that "open source". "open source" has a set meaning that a lot of people spent a lot of time building the reputation of. http://opensource.org/osd-annotated http://opensource.org/osd-annotated I'm not just being pedantic; this matters because if Distelli advertised itself as "open source" and I invested time into it then I found out that they didn't allow me to redistribute my amazing changes or to see my friends brilliant changes I'd be really pissed off. It would mean there was no scope for building up an alternative ecosystem that wasn't under the control of Distelli and thus I'd have no real freedom. For what it's worth (ie. not much, I'm probably not your target market), I agree with drewcrawford - If I'm looking at this kind of tool freedom is important to me and I'll check the open source options before checking the closed source ones.

Adirael 13y ago
I guess they could let you distribute your changes but not their source code. Is there a license for this?
- jarofgreen 13y ago
  Never heard of one. That sounds a bit unworkable to me tho - where would you draw the line? "I fixed your indention. In every file.". And if the parent company could control who got the original source, they could still shutdown alternative uses and thus maintain control. Part of the central definition of open source is the users freedom; which means the producers have to give up some control. You either go full Open Source and accept the potential loss of control or you don't (in which case be honest and don't call it that).
nawitus 13y ago
I actually thought of that when I wrote my comment, but I wasn't sure if open source only meant the open source definition by the open source initiative. Apparently there's no "access to the source code" meaning if we are to believe Wikipedia. Therefore there's three possible cateogories: closed source, open source and 'access to the source code but no free license'.
- jarofgreen 13y ago
  > open source only meant the open source definition by the open source initiative Some people will argue about that point and say it ain't so, but you've seen what I think about that :-) > 'access to the source code but no free license'. I've never seen a good term for that but some big names do it - Atlassian used to do it with JIRA and Confluence (don't know if they still do). It's not a bad thing to do - it's just not Open Source. I guess this confusion is why Richard Stallman wrote this: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...

Adirael 13y ago

I guess they could let you distribute your changes but not their source code. Is there a license for this?

jarofgreen 13y ago
Never heard of one. That sounds a bit unworkable to me tho - where would you draw the line? "I fixed your indention. In every file.". And if the parent company could control who got the original source, they could still shutdown alternative uses and thus maintain control. Part of the central definition of open source is the users freedom; which means the producers have to give up some control. You either go full Open Source and accept the potential loss of control or you don't (in which case be honest and don't call it that).

nawitus 13y ago

I actually thought of that when I wrote my comment, but I wasn't sure if open source only meant the open source definition by the open source initiative. Apparently there's no "access to the source code" meaning if we are to believe Wikipedia. Therefore there's three possible cateogories: closed source, open source and 'access to the source code but no free license'.

jarofgreen 13y ago
> open source only meant the open source definition by the open source initiative Some people will argue about that point and say it ain't so, but you've seen what I think about that :-) > 'access to the source code but no free license'. I've never seen a good term for that but some big names do it - Atlassian used to do it with JIRA and Confluence (don't know if they still do). It's not a bad thing to do - it's just not Open Source. I guess this confusion is why Richard Stallman wrote this: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...