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Will all due respect to OSI and its trademarks, a software with the source code that is open to the public is quite naturally described as "open source". Just b
by huhtenberg 12y ago
Will all due respect to OSI and its trademarks, a software with the source code that is open to the public is quite naturally described as "open source". Just by a simply virtue of dictionary definition of two words involved. I'm all for pedantry, but it's quite misplaced here.
- jordigh 12y agoNo. Please read my link. It is not naturally described as such, because nobody described it naturally as such before OSI came along. The dictionary definitions in this case lead you to the wrong conclusion about the meaning, just like at least one dictionary definition of "free" can lead to the wrong conclusion about what free software means. I am being pedantic about this because I want people to value the principles that open source is supposed to be about. I don't want people to forget what open source really means.
- huhtenberg 12y agoIt is pedantry of the same kind as RMS insisting on using GNU/Linux name instead of Linux. I have several projects under GPL and MIT licenses, some are over 10 years old, and I still think it's perfectly fine to describe something with publicly available code as "open source". Whether it is released under an open source license is another matter, and in many cases it's not, including TC and most of what Microsoft releases. But in conversational English TC is open source, because there's basically no other established term to describe the fact that its source is available. If you are aware of one, I'd like to know it.
- jordigh 12y agoStallman and his toe cheese have nothing to do with this. I think the term "visible source" is quite unambiguous, but perhaps I'm wrong. Microsoft prefers the term "shared source" for what you describe.