[Klathmon]

I'm playing devil's advocate here, but why does "free software" only apply to some licenses with restrictions?

why are the restrictions that the GPL or AGPL puts on you okay to still be called "free", but Apache 2 + Common Clause has restrictions that aren't "free"?

[detaro]

For the term "Open Source", there is a list of criteria which from all I can tell goes back to pretty close to the creators of the term, and which is quite widely accepted: https://opensource.org/osd

[Klathmon]

I get that, but I'm asking why we adhere to that? I'd be more than happy to change the definition of "Open Source" if it means that more companies will participate, as doing so won't entirely rob them of most of their income from that product.

In fact, I'd consider it a significant improvement over the concept of "open core" that has been becoming more and more popular, where the core 80% of a product is open source, but the last 20% isn't, making it so you need to either pay or build that last 20% yourself to use the software.

Contrast with an "open source, except you can't sell it", you'd be more likely to get the whole 100% of the software "open sourced" (as in all other aspects of open-source code, without the ability to sell it), people not using it for profit can benefit immensely, and those who are using it for profit can license it like anything else.

Ostracizing the latter because they don't adhere to strict definitions seems wrong, especially when pretty much all of the alternatives (aside from going full GPL/AGPL) means there is less code out there usable by people, and less users will have the ability to see the code they use.

[detaro]

I'd personally prefer if the various proposals for these things picked their own term and filled that positively (e.g. one recent example used a label along the lines of "fair licensing").

Many projects have build on the foundation of these principles (E.g. Debian, where they originated, accepts only compliant software in the core distro) Many people feel quite strongly about things that can be perceived as corporate interests infringing on the ideals, and I think it would muddle the waters even further, and changing the term should have really widespread support to not feel icky. It's a departure from old ideas, it's not wrong to clearly acknowledge that, and unwillingness to do that looks somewhat questionable IMHO.

[Klathmon]

Like all good arguments, this one comes down to semantics!

I'm not going to argue about what a word or phrase "should" mean, but I am going to say that I think the FOSS community could benefit from being more open to different views in this area.

I think this is a case of dogmatism (that might not be the right word here, in this case i mean overly adhering to definitions) that is causing the entire community to be worse off.

Similar to how you said many people see the unwillingness to adopt a new term as "infringing on the ideals" of the original, I am seeing an attempt to be more honest and straightforward about the intent and ability to use a product.

GPL and friends "blackmail" companies into wanting to choose the proprietary license. It may not mean to do that, and there is normally no ill intentions, but it does in my experience.

Contrasted to Apache 2 + Common Clause, it's upfront about what you can and can't do. You can use this under the apache 2, unless you want to sell it, and then you can't. There's no need to dance around the fact, or try to play games where you don't "technically" restrict the right to sell, but in practice you do, or you introduce technical complexity to avoid triggering rather arbitrary parts of a license. The "official definition" is causing users to be in a worse position in some cases.

We can argue over semantics until the end of time, but at the end of the day "fair licensing" means nothing to me, but "open source" or "open source with restrictions" does. If the concept of the term "open source" changes, I feel nobody will be really impacted for the worse. Debian won't start suddenly allowing less-free software in their core, they will just continue to use the definition they do now and the list of licenses which are acceptable that they do now. But what will happen is we will see more experimentation with monetization methods that don't rely on loopholes or technicalities in existing licenses to achieve the same thing in practice.

[icebraining]

If the concept of the term "open source" changes, I feel nobody will be really impacted for the worse.

Of course it does. It dilutes the concept, making it less relevant and useful. Currently I know that I can sell something I make using open source libraries; tomorrow, I won't. At each dilution, the concept is rendered less useful and more irrelevant.

But what will happen is we will see more experimentation with monetization methods that don't rely on loopholes or technicalities in existing licenses to achieve the same thing in practice.

More experimentation is great, but that doesn't justify reusing the terminology to mean other things.

It's not even a good PR move, considering the (completely predictable) pushback. It's just silly.

[Klathmon]

>It dilutes the concept, making it less relevant and useful. Currently I know that I can sell something I make using open source libraries; tomorrow, I won't.

I'm not trying to twist your words, but that point has already been crossed in my opinion. You can sell some code, but it comes with a lot of extra work that you'll have to do in many cases (if it's copyleft), and all licenses have additional restrictions or aspects that must be followed.

Just because you can categorize many of those licenses into some umbrellas doesn't mean you can wholesale ignore the details of each since it's under some category of "open source".

"Open Source" already means many different things. Copyleft, permissive, are patents or trademarks included? Can you give a warranty? What form of distribution counts? How do you need to make the source available? All of these things vary wildly among OSI licenses, and in the end it's not causing any massive issues because the overarching term isn't used as a technical term, it's used as a colloquialism.