3 ms·
Please don't say 'fully open source', as it confuses the language. "Open Source" is a well-defined term[0] . What Tom Preston-Warner describes there is basical
by chimeracoder 12y ago
Please don't say 'fully open source', as it confuses the language.
"Open Source" is a well-defined term[0] . What Tom Preston-Warner describes there is basically the same as Microsoft's "Shared source[1] " licenses, which do not fit the definition of Open Source.
[0]http://opensource.org/osdhttp://opensource.org/osd http://opensource.org/osdhttp://opensource.org/osd
[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_sourcehttp://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_sourcehttp://en.m.wiki...
- publicfig 12y agoNotice he says that it wouldn't be fully open source.
- chc 12y agoOf course chimeracoder noticed this. That's what he was talking about. Because "open-source" is a binary condition, being "not fully open-source" is like being "not fully pregnant" — the phrase is just an equivocation that ultimately means the same thing as "not open-source."
- jkrems 12y agoBut a family with three daughters can be "not fully pregnant". Parts are pregnant, parts are not.
- chc 12y agoI don't think anybody would ever say a family with three daughters was "not fully pregnant." You would say some members of the family are pregnant and others aren't. And anyway, this wasn't the sense in which Preston-Warner used the phrase — he did describe what he meant, and it was not open-source software. It was, as chimeracoder said, similar to Microsoft's "shared source" program.
- ajanuary 12y agoA better phrase would have been "not entirely open-source".