The fact that you had to change your use of the term back in the 90s is deplorable but is it really any argument for going back?
I for one like where we are (which is not an endorsement of OSI as an organization, just of their definition). The terms are short and universally understood, there is a wide range of licenses to choose from, some of them even got a yay/nay from lawyers.
I feel that the current status quo around OSI-approved licenses is largely beneficial to incumbents ("big tech" / cloud providers) and is generally harmful for software innovation industry-wide.
A fair number of vocal people in the industry express contempt for anything using a non-OSI license, even though many of these licenses are simply trying to empower a sustainable business model so the work can't be stolen and abused by cloud providers.
If you independently create a truly innovative new infrastructure software product today (or during any other non-ZIRP / non-boom-time period) with the intention of forming a company around it, you are faced with several bad options around licensing and source availability:
* If you adopt an OSI-approved license other than AGPL, and your product is successful, larger incumbents can and will steal your work and capture most of its value. You will either go out of business, or eventually need to re-license, causing mass outrage and accusations of rug-pulling.
* If you choose AGPL, most VC-funded companies won't touch your software and statistically it will almost certainly fail commercially as a result. Additionally there are several concerning theoretical loopholes in the AGPL, as well as conceptual problems with a non-EULA nonetheless trying to enforce restrictions affecting end users.
* If you choose an entirely close-sourced model, your chance of success is very very low, especially for B2B products. You're a small/new vendor, other companies won't trust you.
So the logical conclusion is you should choose a non-OSI license which prevents the cloud providers from stealing the profits from your hard work. But then random people will attack you everywhere for "open washing" and not being "open source", even if you don't use the word "open" anywhere. People have seemingly been trained to have a knee-jerk negative reaction to SSPL, BSL, etc and that's a really bad state of affairs.
It's especially problematic that the OSI is a closed-membership entity, and not an open-membership professional association. There is no democratic way for software engineers to influence its policies. As an industry we've effectively ceded control over what licenses are acceptable to a random small non-profit. And as a result of that, it's harder today to be a successful independent software vendor than it was in the 90s, which is an absurd state of affairs.
My point was that accepting OSI’s terminology maintains a status quo that is harmful to innovation and harmful to independent software developers. You’re ceding control over what licenses are acceptable to a closed-membership non-democratic entity that isn’t a professional association. I choose not to do that by rejecting their terminology as a necessary first step.
You can easily release something with a shared source/source available license that doesnt make it open source. You can also dual license gpl/proprietary use license
> release something with a shared source/source available license that doesnt make it open source
I already described problems with that approach up-thread. People attack software that uses non-OSI-approved licenses and accuse it of "open washing" even if it avoids the term "open". Or they attack it for not being "open source" and refuse to use it, even if they're not working at a cloud provider or competitor, and are completely unaffected by the extra license terms.
In any case you're repeatedly saying "open source" when you actually mean "OSI-approved", which is the entire thing I'm railing against here.
> You can also dual license gpl/proprietary use license
That solves literally none of the cloud provider problems I've described above.
I for one like where we are (which is not an endorsement of OSI as an organization, just of their definition). The terms are short and universally understood, there is a wide range of licenses to choose from, some of them even got a yay/nay from lawyers.