My irritation aside, though, I can't decide whether the author is passively ignorant of the rest of the iceberg, or actively chooses to ignore it.
But the definition itself is fluid, contextual, and subject to change over time.
Although I’m no fanatical Stallmanite (Stallmanist? :), I do see the categorical distinctions clear as day; can’t understand why Open Source people play the willful ignorance card.
Free Software is good for people primarily, while Open Source is good for corporations primarily.
If people ignore FS and promote OS, what does that tell us about their intentions?
Both open source and free software are defined as software that allows you to:
* use the software for any purpose
* examine the source
* distribute the software under the same license terms as you received it
* modify the software in any way
* distribute the software in modified form under the same license terms as you received the original
Stallman's quibble with "open source" is that open source messaging focuses on the business benefits of this kind of software rather than the inherent virtues of free software (and the inherent vices of non-free software). Note also that even to Stallman and the FSF, even BSD- or MIT-licensed works are "free software"; software licenses that forbid redistribution under a different license are called copyleft licenses under the FSF.
Maybe I could add a "Further Reading" section at the end though with links to such topics.
Perhaps this is because their goal is to promote the GNU licenses, not to be objective about it.
OSI was created in part in reaction to ambiguity and confusion around "free software."
Most end users are just happy there’s a ton of free, quality code to run and study. Admittedly that’s only the case because of the FSF, but I think they should just accept that “open source” is a perfectly good term to describe software that is free and you can download the source.
Everything else is licensing nuances e.g, politics
The idea of Free Software, at its most extreme, exists as a useful endpoint of an "Overton Window" for software. Which is to say, all software benefits from its existence even if they don't e.g. sign on to the GPL. You're forced to consider it as a possibility.
Without it, we'd probably think of "Open Source" as the most "open" software can be -- which, as OP proves, is quite wrong and nebulous.
Richard Stallman and GPL discussions certainly do mention ethics as part of the considerations. I agree that no person is completely disjoint from ethical considerations, with intelligence. But as this thread explores, there are multiple points of view, unclear and untested aspects legally within multiple legal jurisdictions.
But you make a large leap when you say "they should not mention" .. It is a dramatic statement, not a logical one, it is more in common with persuasive, political speech than logic there.
As noted by others, a useful simplification is to focus on one particular LICENSE at a time. Is this license ... x y z. As Google did long ago and as Github started to do and as the OSI does and as FSF does... like that.. not debate on the entire concept, but instead focus on the implementation, as software does.
Personally speaking it irks me a little when different terms are made ownership by someone. OSI is doing great work but is it considered an authority when it comes to defining what open source is? In other words, can open source exist without OSI? I certainly think so.
For example, what does it mean when Sentry says their licensing scheme is not acceptable by OSI [1]? Does it change the meaning of open source?
It's really confusing.
[0] https://github.com/streetwriters/notesnook/discussions/747#d...
Of course, they can't do it alone. The question is whether you should support OSI's efforts or not. Do you want "open source" to have a clear meaning or do you want to drift into meaningless like "agile" or just "open?"
It's the same as any other standard. If everyone stops following the standard then it will fail, but is that really want you want?
But yes, on the popularity bend, you're correct -- the OSI basically was a giant PR campaign, started by Netscape to publicize their going-out-of-business sale as a good thing, actually. Most importantly, they specifically wanted to separate themselves from the FSF project's four freedoms, which they viewed as antithetical to business -- or rather, antithetical to any business who wanted to buy the charred remains of Netscape, like AOL. So they started with Debian's DFSG, and whittled it down until they had something they could sell.
In my opinion, people argue about terminology too much rather than the freedoms and the society we want to build, but that's just the internet, sometimes.
According to this press release they did not win the trademark for ‘Open Source’, only ‘OSI Certified’ (which would be a wholly better definition for people to use, however, it’s a term that might need explanation or further context when used, so it’s not often said).
https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
A particular kind, yes. The OSI definition? I'd want to see something that showed objectively that this is what people think. I saw some projects I support come under fire for not being open source recently- I've been. a user and supporter of FOSS software for a long time. I didn't realize that making exclusions on who can use your software wasn't open source. If a developer doesn't want their code used in a weapons system, it doesn't meet the OSI definition.
I know it now, but then I think that leaves the software to use a term that's much less accurate. I don't think that happens because they have a profit motive and want to exploit the term open source. In fact I've seen licenses that are essentially open source except they try to stop people from making a bunch of money off of community work, including those currently controlling the project.
I have no problem with talking about Tesla cars; nobody argues that we should be talking about Nikolai Tesla's personal car, or a car down the street that somebody spraypainted the word "Tesla" on.
At this point, the counter problem is growing: the legitimate alternative meanings of the term “open source” are getting more used as time goes, not less, and speaking personally I don’t think maintenance or blog posts is going to fix it. Creative Commons licenses got pretty good at this by adding more words to each variant of their license titles. What about that? There’s an inherent problem with hoping to keep a term as short and generic as “open source”, when the issues you care about are separate from whether you’re allowed to look at the source.
this is not the case with open source. for close to 2 decades it was very obvious what open source meant and there was no confusion about it. it wasn't until the source available movement started to take off and they started to cash in on open source's reputation and identity for the sake of promoting themselves and cheapening the meaning that it became confusing.
the problem is that since this is a cultural movement and not a piece of intellectual property like a trademark there is no way to prevent people from contorting open source into whatever best suits their self serving interests.
I think it’s hyperbolic of you to suggest that when people use “open source” to mean “source that is open”, that implies they’re being selfish or contorting anything. You’re failing to acknowledge the very real problem that “open source” taken literally doesn’t mean what some people want it to mean.
I’m only offering ideas on how to solve an existing problem of unclear words and unreasonable expectations, not asking anyone to do anything. We can continue to use “open source”, and suffer the consequences and continue to complain. I think the problem the author called out will continue to get worse. Plus, as pointed out elsewhere in this thread, OSI co-opted this term from others who had already been using it differently before them.
It would be way better if the term was clearly a name, rather than something that tries to gate-keep the meaning of general words. That would make it so you assume you need to look it up, and not assume what it means. It would be better if “open source” didn’t have other, easier to assume and understand meanings that came both before and after OSI’s ideas. If we don’t want to use a name, then it would be better if the phrase used a word or two to capture the ideas in OSI’s version. Using “open source” to mean something with restriction is a desire to have your cake and eat it too. This is in essence a marketing slogan that wants to rest multiple license limitations on the positive-sounding word “open”, without having to admit there are parts of the license that limit some kinds of openness and freedom in certain ways (under the possibly true belief that such limitations are the maximum balance of openness for everyone). Both term “open source” and “free software” suffer from this problem, hoping to establish a slogan out of two words that most clearly imply a meaning that is unfortunately antithetical to the movement. This is just a choice, and we could choose to be clear, or choose to fight the tide.
What you are talking about is source available software.
Whenever this discussion is rolled out again, it's useful to address a few key points. First, open source is defined by the open source definition. This is not contingent on the OSI receiving a trademark for the term. The common usage of the term is defined by the OSD, and much in the same way that selling "cakes" and fulfilling orders with used car tires is dishonest, so too is pushing non-free software under the brand of open source.
And note that open source is defined by the OSD -- not by the OSI. Should the OSI attempt to re-define "open source" without careful consultation with the community or in service of a conflict of interest, the community will withdraw its support for the new definition.
Painting the term as having always been loosely defined is historical revisionism. What we have always seen, and what we are seeing now, is a minority view that seeks to forward an unorthodox definition of open source in the service of their private financial interests. I am not prepared to accept a novel interpretation of open source because you feel that it would be more profitable for your business if I did.
The open source brand has been wildly successful and it's a lucrative target for bad actors to exploit with non-conformant software licenses. Don't be a sucker. These interpretations are not in your best interest.
Subdividing "source available" as implied but not well defined in this article, into its own group does not substantially help me. When someone describes a useful "open source" thing to me, one of my first questions is which license it is under, and that would be the same whether someone said "source available" or "open source".
Perhaps there's something more behind "punch in the gut", but I don't really know what that is. There's a link to a tweet about these projects being boosted under the open source term, but the tweet has little engagement: 20 project logos, 43 likes. Did it actually reach beyond direct customers? Did the term open source have any impact at all here?
often depends who you ask, istr stallmans take on "open source" is that the term came into existence explicitly to dilute the free software movement and make space for evil companies to do evil things. if you were to buy this then it may continue from that logic that everything covered in the article is well labelled open source.
i don't really condone stallmans biased and divisive position on this, but it is exemplary of the kind of conversation we're wading into with opinions about what it means historically.
e.g. https://www.cmpod.net/all-transcripts/history-open-source-fr... under "A Surreal Situation"
But there is no consensus on what is "open source". Is AGPL open source? Despite the FSF and OSI approving AGPL, many would argue that it is a EULA.
The inevitable result is the erosion of the generic branding "open source" and the rise of specific licenses. "MIT" or "Apache" or "BSD" evoke one set of reactions, while "GPL" or "MPL" evoke another.
It's not "consensus" in the sense of "unanimity" (is anything ever, when it comes to widely used terms?) but there's a "consensus" in the sense of widespread agreement to use the OSI's definition.
> Is AGPL open source?
Yes. Why wouldn't it be? It meets all the standard requirements (https://opensource.org/osd) and the OSI has approved it.
> If I were to run a modified AGPL'd SSH server on my own hardware, the question of whether I'm violating the AGPL depends on whether I'm allowing others to access it remotely. If the AGPL can be violated without copyright infringement, it's clearly in a different legal category than the GPL.
That "[AGPL] meets all the standard requirements" and "OSI has approved it" is really an indictment of OSI judgment, not a sound argument with basis in copyright law.
I agree with the post and also other posters here that in that the post skips over the free/open software debate which is also quite relevant.
