At the end of the day that is why I decided to not be open for my business. Even if you try to be on the good side its hard and you have the eternal source available vs open source debate.
I wish they would develop a license friendly to both businesses that want to ship software that is source available and users of that software. One could strike a balance between full OSS and legitimate needs of the producer to live off their creation.
They can use whatever licence they want. It's their software. They should only call it open source if they use an OSI-approved licence. Doing otherwise is openwashing and is frowned upon.
I wonder if one reason particular groups of people have a hard time getting others to care about some issues is this tendency to make up words in order to make things sound more malicious than they are. Usually it just ends up sounding silly.
A judge saying something once in the history of the world doesn't make it so that you can force language on others. Most people that I've interacted that work in software refer to "source available" as open source in every day speech, and unless they were preparing legal documents that's what they'd say. If you include normal people that don't work in software, then even more likely the usage is the one you're complaining about. You sound like this: https://stallman-copypasta.github.io/
Normal people don't even know what to do with the code. If a project is source open or not is completely irrelevant to them. To them usually it's way more relevant that open source software can be picked up and further developed by any other software developer and that it's free.
In this case, the licence they have chosen explicitly:
- only grants the right "to access and use the code solely for the purposes of review, compilation and non-commercial distribution."
- only grants the right "provide the code to anyone else and publish excerpts of it for the purposes of review, compilation and non-commercial distribution"
- "you are not entitled to use or do anything with the code for any commercial or other purpose, other than review, compilation and non-commercial distribution"
This breaks all 4 freedoms the free software definition and at least aspects 1,3,4 and 6 of the OSD.
From a legal POV, this project is unforkable. You are not allowed to modify this in any way (even just for your own use).
Furthermore, you are not even allowed to use this internally (unmodified and without ever distributing it). I am not even sure it is possible to legally be a user of the software for its intended purpose. The license states clearly that "other than review, compilation and non-commercial distribution" you "are not entitled to use or do anything" and that includes using the compiled result to watch videos. This is about as restrictive as the MS-RSL.
Basically, the only thing you can do with it is archive it and look at it. (and wait lifetime + 70 years until it becomes public domain)
Luckily I didn't mention either "closed source" or "proprietary software" in my comment. I mentioned that people colloquially use "open source" to refer to any code base that has source available to read.
Maybe there's some hidden point you're trying to make by associating these concepts but it'd be easier if you said it plainly.
Other than that I think you find that people in real life don't tend to be exact in their use of language all the time, and calling understandable imprecisions "wrong" tends to decrease the number of friends you get.
People distort words to the point of meaningless unless the use of those words are defended. "Open Source" is a term that is actively being defended.
The history of the term is very clear. The term was coined by Christine Peterson in a group session in 1998 with Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann, and Eric S. Raymond. Months later the OSI was created by the same people in order to manage that definition. There is nothing unclear here. "Open source" is defined by OSI and it has been defined by them from the very start.
If communities let others distort words, those words loose their meaning. As a well known example, the word "woke" which has long been abandoned by the community that coined it.
"Open source" is an actively defended term by the organisation that originally defined it and the community around them.
Well if you're actively consciously defending it like that I can only wish you good luck. I guess if that's the goal comparing you to Stallman with GNU is more of a compliment than anything.
I’m not a fan of Stallman by any measure — his posture has often put people off some licenses and made GPL a bit problematic —, but even I think you’re engaging in unreasonable doublespeak.
The web is full of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript you can see the source for; and for which you can be sued by copying for your own commercial gain. By your definition, websites are open source; and yet, they are proprietary work. Something having its source open doesn’t make it Open Source.
This kind of doublespeak reeks of Reddit-grade corporate astroturfing.
The Open Source licenses are defined and protected in a certain way. You can’t just say “oh, me and my friends don’t think of it like that” and expect to be correct. I can’t build an app scamming people out of currency by abusing ISO 4217, and then excuse myself under “me and the people I know disagree with ISO”. OSI protects the licenses, the Vegan Society certifies what ‘vegan’ means, ISO does ISO things, and so on.
It’s okay to admit we’re wrong or ignorant, so I won’t pretend I’m an expert in this area. I also wouldn’t call anyone Stallman just because they are defending a term that deserves protection. “Source available” but not under the terms of an OSI license is NOT compliant with the term.
> Maybe there's some hidden point you're trying to make by associating these concepts but it'd be easier if you said it plainly.
I'm sorry, I thought it was obvious.
As "proprietary software" and "closed source" refer to the same it wouldn't be logical to use the opposite "open source" to refer to "proprietary software".
People don't have to be exact in their language, the point is for the other to understand what you mean.
I consider it the most polite and the most constructive to use the definition from the believers themselves.
Academic, as in relating to education and scholarship. Anarchy, as in without Archons. Archons, as in leaders of ancient Greek city-states. Let the communist define what it is, let the socialist, let the Jew, let the ufologist etc
There is the Open Source Initiative, the page starts with what they consider Open Source. https://opensource.org/osd/
Besides practicality the website also states: Never use or register any trademarks that are confusingly similar to, or a play on, the OSI or OSI Logo. An example of unacceptable is given: "Open Source Project"
That is not a settled debate IMO, even Stallman said as much. Sure its not FOSS / FLOSS, but trying to push for a position where open source doesn't mean I can see the code is very much not agreed by everybody.
Just like Microsofts opinion didn't matter whenever they tried to dilute the meaning of open source, and just like MongoDB's and others opinion didn't matter, your opinion doesn't matter. Microsoft is far more convincing than you and they did not win this argument.
Microsoft gave up and now only calls OSI-approved licenses open source.
Open Source means OSI-approved.
If you can read the source code but it's not OSI-approved, than it's source-available or shared source or something else.
Malicious is the attempt to restrict open source to floss and start a shitstorm about open source but not floss software, because it prevents transparency for software where floss isn't an option.
If I define climate neutral as climate positive, climate neutral doesn't become climate positive nor do I get authority of the term climate neutral.
And yet that is absolutely the kind of bullshit you are pulling. Thank you for denouncing yourself.
Some terms were defined by a community and their use defended.
Others were defined by a community, appropriated by others, distorted by others and subsequently abandoned by the original community.
And yet others, were abandoned and then reclaimed by the original community.
"Open Source" is in the first category, defined by OSI and defended by the FLOSS community. It is actively being defended, and fish much bigger than you have failed to topple the community.
I honestly don’t care if it is or not, but this has been discussed to death with regard to unreal and the consensus has been (from epic) to consistently refer to the source as “available on GitHub” not as “open source”, because that gives people an incorrect impression of the permissiveness of the license.
Is this a hill you really want to die on?
It doesn’t matter at all.
The “can see code” = “must be open source” argument is stupid because it’s entirely opinion based. You cannot be right about it.
It depends what you choose to define “open source” as. If you define it as some arbitrary thing (eg. I can read the source code) then of course you’re right. …but you can’t force other people to accept your arbitrary definition.
You can only have an opinion about it.
Same as anyone else.
Is it really worth the argument?
Source available is unambiguous, being explicit (“source can be download from GitHub”) I means you don’t have to waste your time on arguments like this for, what seems, truely trivial reasons.
The PolyForm Project has a suite of standardized, source available licenses for when using an OSI-approved open source license is inappropriate. They probably could have used PolyForm Noncommercial instead of drafting their own license.
> One could strike a balance between full OSS and legitimate needs of the producer to live off their creation.
That is what the BSL is for. It is not an open source license but it is a source available licence that automatically transitions to an open source license after a predetermined amount of time.
I told him directly on his channel that this is the case and that calling non-OSI licences open source is openwashing. And I recommended the Mozilla model of trademark + MPL for their purposes.
He replied to my comment but didn't seem to care about the issue.
TLDR: they used an OSI-approved version on a previous app, someone forked it, filled it with ads, and published it in the app store trying to make it look like the original one. They are ok with people modifying the app, just not doing that.
I am not saying that this is the best approach, but that is their justification at least.
To me personally, as long as I can see the source and modify it, it is open source. OSI-certified is a subset of that. OSI clains that they "define"
Open Source, and I think that is mostly true, just not 100%.
The fact that OSI doesn't have a license which prevents the malicious forking mentioned above seems like an indication that they won't (or can't) cover some cases that I believe are open source.
Note: the forked app in question is NewPipe and not done by them.
> They are ok with people modifying the app, just not doing that.
And the license is more restrictive than that I believe. If they drop the project without changing the license I'm not sure you could fork it while asking for donation (Depends on how you interpret: "directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation").
As for malicious forking as other mentioned you can use trademark to prevent it.
After looking a bit more at the license, I am not even sure it is possible to use it for the intended purpose.
It clearly states "you are not entitled to use or do anything with the code for any commercial or other purpose, other than review, compilation and non-commercial distribution".
That means that if you compile it unmodified, you are NOT entitled to use the compiled binary to watch videos. You are not entitled to install or execute the binary. You are not entitled to use it in any way other than reviewing it.
This is what happens when idiots get creative with licenses.
