[thrower123]

Open-source doesn't necessarily imply everything that the FOSS and GPL folks think it does outside of their semantic bubble. It's one of those bastardized terms that has become so mangled and situationally-dependent as to be almost meaningless.

For a significant number of people "open-source" just means, "I found this on GitHub"

[pfooti]

It hasn't, though. There's at least two different organizations that work to concretely operationalize what "open source" means. People may be confused about the term, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying to educate about it, and it definitely doesn't mean we should let other people go on polluting the ontological space with garbage that seems intentionally designed to confuse.

[falcolas]

Do you consider Microsoft Windows, or Oracle database to be open source software? Because the source code is viewable (albeit under an NDA).

Open source does have a specific meaning, and twisting it like this does nobody any favors.

[thrower123]

No, I'm well aware of what open-source is supposed to mean, as opposed to shared-source or whatever the proper term is for that type of arrangement.

I just try to deal with the world as it is, and the damage has been done already to the popular meaning of the term. I don't have the energy or interest to tilt at this particular wind-mill, so at this point if somebody says something is open-source, unless I have prior knowledge of what they think open-source means, I can't really infer anything in particular, and have to ask some more questions.

[icebraining]

Sure. And plenty of companies have stretched thin the definition of "free" or "unlimited". But that doesn't mean we have to accept that as OK.