[Sir_Cmpwn]

>every OSS project that tries some new way of monetizing

These are not OSS projects.

>You're just talking about taking an open source license and adding a restriction around monetizing the code - this is not open source, as it violates one of the 10 or so requirements to be Truly Open Source (by some organization's standards).

4 requirements, upheld by two highly respected organizations. You can read them here:

https://opensource.org/osd

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

People need to eat, and that's fine, they can license their software in any way that they think will put food on their table. But if it's not open source, don't call it open source.

[staticassertion]

I'm aware of the OSD. I'm referring to open source in the sense of the source code being made available.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest.

[BeetleB]

>The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest.

Given how every Reddit/HN thread I come across has an argument on whether it is appropriate to use open source in this context, I strongly disagree with the phrase "most people". In my experience, most people call it open source, and it only misleads the minority that insists on owning the definition of the phrase.

[bunderbunder]

How far we've come.

I remember back in 2001, when Reddit and HN didn't exist yet, and the whole Internet was caught up in a seemingly unanimous furor about how, not only were most of Microsoft's just-released Shared Source licenses not open source, but even the ones like MS-PL that met the OSI definition still weren't open source simply because they had Shared Source cooties on them by virtue of being announced at the same time.

I fear that the bad old days were so far back now that people no longer remember why this stuff is important.

[BeetleB]

What you're describing is to be expected. In 2001, the percentage of people on the Internet that were tech geeks and aware of OSI and GNU was much higher than today, and so they could more easily control the narrative. Today they are in the minority.

I've seen this in many activist communities. They (likely unintentionally) pick regular language to mean something very specific, and then spend endless amounts of time arguing that everyone else is using their terminology incorrectly. It's a huge waste of time. The rational thing to do is give your concepts unambiguous names - not ones where the majority that speak the English language could take to mean something else.

>I fear that the bad old days were so far back now that people no longer remember why this stuff is important.

Lumping those who disagree with your terminology with people who disagree with your philosophy isn't going to help the cause either. It alienates allies. In my experience, people by and large agree that it is important and are favorable with it. They merely disagree with the terminology.

And that's the other thing that happens with ideological movements. As they grow, many fall into a local optimum where the focus is on purity. Who amongst us is pure enough to be in our circle? We'll keep devising ways to root them out (insistence on poor terminology being one way).

[Sir_Cmpwn]

There is a loud minority of people who disagree, mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner. The term "open source" is a trademark of the Open Source Initiative and has a clear, unambiguous meaning.

[icebraining]

Unfortunately, no, the OSI could never get a trademark on "open source".

[Sir_Cmpwn]

Ah, pity.

[BeetleB]

>There is a loud minority of people who disagree

The minority is those who insist on the OSI definition as the only appropriate way to use "open source".

>mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner.

The problem I'm seeing is the labeling of people who disagree about a single point (terminology) as bad actors (i.e. people who are bent on "exploiting"). As I mentioned in another comment, this is sadly a common path that ideological movements take - attributing intentions to others, and focusing on rooting out impure adherents.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

>The minority is those who insist on the OSI definition as the only appropriate way to use "open source".

No, it's not. I actually ran a poll on my Mastodon account last night:

https://www.strawpoll.me/16741426/r

I followed up with many of the "something else" folks and most of the people I spoke to said that they were confused by the premise because free/open source are different things, and one had a strange and political definition of open source as "software which helps people", and none of them agreed that the Commons Clause qualified.

>The problem I'm seeing is the labeling of people who disagree about a single point (terminology) as bad actors (i.e. people who are bent on "exploiting").

These people might not be bad actors or have bad intent from the start. But if, upon being corrected, they don't change their course, then they are bad actors. They prey on people who don't understand software licensing, and who only know that open source is "good".

[yellowapple]

The reddit/HN arguments about the definition of "open source" pop up specifically because there are people stubbornly insisting upon subverting the definition of "open source" to mean something other than its official and formal and well-established definition per the OSI.

If the license does not meet the OSI's definition of "open source", then it is not open source. If the license does not meet the FSF's definition of "free software", then is it not free software. Case closed. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. These organizations have existed for decades, and the definitions they have formalized for their respective terminologies have in turn existed for decades. The meanings of "open source" and "free software" are perfectly clear, and the sorts of licenses being discussed - like those using the Commons Clause - are very clearly neither open source nor free software by those very same well-established-for-decades definitions.

[caboteria]

I'll let the official Commons Clause website speak for me.

https://commonsclause.com/

> Is this “Open Source”? No.

[Flimm]

There is only one commonly accepted definition of open source. Just making the source code available is not enough, you also have to grant the right to be able to use the software for commercial purposes, etc. See: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

[Flimm]

@hoaw All I'm asking is that they don't use the terms "open source" for something that isn't. If people are trying to change the only commonly accepted definition of "open source", then I'm asking that they stop. Semantic diffusion needs to be resisted. Is it too much to ask that we don't allow the term "open source" to have less and less meaning? Is it too much to ask to use terms like "shared source" or "source available" instead of the oxymoron "non-commercial open source"?

You make an interesting point about patent clauses. I think I would say that it isn't the OSI-approved licenses that make a project unusable commercially, it is the patents that companies hold. OSI classifies licenses as they stand alone, it doesn't classify patents or declare projects as safe from patents.

[hoaw]

The whole point of the license is presumably that they disagree with that definition. As far as I know a license can be OSI approved without containing patent grants, effectively making the code unusable for commercial purposes. There is also, again as far as I know, nothing stopping companies from using contracts to restrict the use of code in at least some OSI approved licenses.

That said, I do think they should state that it is "non-commercial open source".

[icebraining]

A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. You're free to use another definition for the same term, but if you don't make it extremely clear to you're departing from the most commonly used, don't be surprised if people treat you as any other sleazy salesperson.

The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as so. Unlike software copyright, software patents are not even valid in many countries.

[hoaw]

> A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it.

How open something has to be, to be called open source is a matter of opinion, so is to some degree what open means in the context of open source. Otherwise they would have to call it "unconditional open source" but then a number of, if not most, licenses wouldn't qualify.

> The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as so.

It isn't a red herring. I use it as an example to show that the openness in OSI approved licenses aren't absolute. Some licenses have other terms. They might for instance retain the moral rights of the author, try to avoid any liability or condition the distribution of software. If you can have those exceptions and still be considered open source I don't see an objective reason why you can't call software where the economic rights are retained open source as well (even though I can understand why people wouldn't want that).

[icebraining]

You're asking why should it mean X or Y, but my argument is that regardless of why it came to have the current definition, with its specific idiosyncrasies, changing it (to anything else) - and especially expanding it - is itself bad, because it makes discourse more confusing and therefore the term less relevant and useful.

There's nothing special about it, they're just two English words. What makes the term special is its origin and history - specifically, how it was coined and spread by the OSI and its members.

So, they should make their own history with a new term. In time it might be more relevant than open source, and that might be great. But don't mix them up.