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0 pointssbauch5y ago0 comments

I don't think I've changed the meaning unilaterally, others here seem to agree that the meaning is evolving.

I can concede that we are guilty of wanting the wave of goodwill, but I have a hard time agreeing that this is a bait and switch. And I certainly hope nobody is going to die because we use "open source" instead of "source available".

The part of this conversation that leaves me wanting is that it all seems so positive rather than normative, and doesn't consider the benefits of choosing this license over a closed source product.

Our goals here are to make SAML SSO more accessible and run a business that helps some good customers use the software we've created. There's a lot of net positives in that IMO, and this whole "but it's not ACTUALLY open source" is a distraction borne of inflexibility and a lack of creativity.

So how do we as an industry move forward in a way that allows individual use of source available software, but prevents companies from unfairly profiting off of that? Is that desirable? What do we call that? Maybe business source, maybe source available is fine. That's a lot more interesting of a conversation to me. If you won't have that conversation until we strike open source from our website I understand.

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bawolff5y ago

> There's a lot of net positives in that IMO, and this whole "but it's not ACTUALLY open source" is a distraction borne of inflexibility and a lack of creativity.

Being "flexible" and "creative" with the truth is just a fancy way of saying lying.

Are you seriously arguing the ends justify the means, where the end is some cloud saml business and the means is misrepresenting the licensing terms of your product? That's probably the lowest stakes ends justify the means argument i have ever heard and is pretty rediculous.

At the end of the day, if you can't operate your business ethically and with integrity, then no, its not a net positive. This is true for pretty much any business venture, but its especially true for some random cloud offering competiting in a market with many other competitors doing roughly the same thing. The way you talk about this stuff you would think you were trying to solve world hunger.

> If you won't have that conversation until we strike open source from our website I understand.

Why do you think i'm interested in that conversation at all? I have no stake in your company, i don't care how you structure your IP, if you succeed as a company or if you fail. I do however have a stake in the open source movement and care deeply when parasites try to profit off it without fulfilling their obligations to the movement.

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