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0 pointsteilo4y ago0 comments

No court has as yet ruled that the OSI definition of "open source" is the legal definition of the term. The ruling here does not either. If it had limited its ruling to the term "open source," then this would indeed begin to codify what "open source" means from a legal standpoint.

However, the courts ruled upon the composite term "open source and free". Under the OSI definition, open source implies free. But no court has yet so ruled.

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rectang4y ago· 1 in thread

I said "widely understood", which is true irrespective of whether a court has ruled on it. There's a huge ecosystem which is underpinned by the OSD.

There are also a handful of orgs (most prominently a few VC-funded companies) who want to freeload on the goodwill of "Open Source" to market their proprietary software. And there are some Free Software advocates who dislike the very term "Open Source". (Not that "Free Software" has court-endorsed clarity either.)

teiloOP4y ago

It may be "widely understood" but one could just as well argue that open source is "widely misunderstood." What matters is how the courts understand the term, and that, unfortunately, has not been resolved.

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