The author posted this in a recent discussion on GitHub [0]. Thought I'd share it to get more opinions on the matter.<p>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.<p>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?<p>It's really confusing.<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/streetwriters/notesnook/discussions/747#discussioncomment-3292359" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/streetwriters/notesnook/discussions/747#d...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://open.sentry.io/licensing/" rel="nofollow">https://open.sentry.io/licensing/</a>
No organization can strictly define "open source" except to say which definition they use. A more valid way to approach the issue is to point out that a license is or is not not approved by the OSI, the FSF, or some other person or group. "Open source" has always been and will always be as fuzzy a term as "the Metaverse" and "handsome".
Thanks for writing this up, Dan.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
I have always had to treat different licenses differently. BSD, MIT, LGPL, GPL, AGPL, Apache, etc. They all mean different things which have impact on how and where I might place them.<p>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".<p>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?
Maybe it would be better to promote and rally around a term that’s more specific? The best terms are the ones that naturally lead someone to the right conclusion, and are hard to make incorrect assumptions about. The main problem with trying to gate keep a generic term like “open source” is that it legitimately has multiple meanings, and the obvious and literal interpretation is the very one the author is complaining about. This is going to forever remain a fight against the tide, or a pee into the wind, or any number of other colorful well known phrases. It doesn’t take anything away from OSI to acknowledge their great work and also refer to OSI’s definition of open source specifically, when that is the one you mean.
As someone who works on an open-source fork of the open-source software mentioned in the post, I am now exclusively referring to the open-source version of it as Apache (APLv2) -licensed. Maybe that's how we fix this confusion?
The term "Open Source" is not a trademark and the USPTO will not allow it to become a trademark. The OSI themselves acknowledge this. <a href="https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.php" rel="nofollow">https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...</a>
As long as there is money to be made by blurring the line, people will continue to do it.<p>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.<p>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.
A bit of context for HNers before/after reading -- This is from the personal blog of the creator of Bookstack[0], which is licensed under MIT.<p>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.<p>[0]: <a href="https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack</a>
Open source is all about the license. The code can all be available for anybody to look at but there might be a restrictive license preventing you from compiling it. A senior exec at my former company once said "Open source doesn't mean it's free".
Must confess, I get a bit irritated when people try to explain "open source", but then very carefully steer away from "free software" in the explanation. It is like trying to explain what makes water flow, but trying very hard to avoid using "fluid" or its cognates.<p>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.
There's nothing magical or divinely inspired about the OSI open source definition; it's an elaboration on the DSFG. The DSFG has the hoops it does to facilitate the mental gymnastics of reconciling the appealing concept of free software with the ugly reality that the GPL was a poorly-implemented singleton that formed the bedrock of their enterprise.