[travisd]

Facebook has a terrible track record when it comes to open-sourcing their internal tools. See: Phabricator, HHVM, Flow, Jest, ...

Even React, which is their most popular library, is not actually "open source." They're very transparent about the fact that their priorities are Facebook's needs -- even if they do take community input.

None of this is per-se bad, but you should definitely treat an open-source project out of Facebook with skepticism when it comes to adopting it for your own use cases (possibly making sure you're not too locked in when an incompatible v2 comes out with virtually no warning after FB's internal implementation drifts).

[peterhunt]

This is not a fair characterization of React. The tech lead of the project doesn't even work at FB anymore.

[folkrav]

> Even React, which is their most popular library, is not actually "open source."

How do you define "open source"? It typically simply means the source code is available. By any definition I can think of, React is definitely both free and open source. How they design the software or if they take contributors isn't really relevant.

[TheDong]

> How do you define "open source"? It typically simply means the source code is available.

I agree with you that react is definitely open source, but I'd also encourage you to use more specific wording around what "open source" means.

I think wikipedia gets this right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

"Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose"

The license is the key bit.

On the other hand, there's "source available" software (also on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software ), which is what your definition equates to, and I personally don't want to see confused with open source or free software.

[kodah]

There's three domains where people usually use the term "open source".

- Freely licensed software (eg: MIT, GPL, etc)

- Code visibility (eg: ForgeRock)

- Community focus/contributions

Not all "open source" implements each of these, and just because they implement one and not the other doesn't mean they're not expressly open source. Just some ecosystems are more open than others.

[folkrav]

React is MIT, which is pretty much one of the least restrictive ones, granting basically no rights to the original publisher.

That Wikipedia definition sounds more like what typically gets described as "Free and Open-Source Software"/FOSS, no?

[TheDong]

I'm aware React is MIT and of the various licenses etc.

As I see it commonly defined, "open source software", FOSS, and FLOSS all mean the same thing more or less. That the project uses an OSI approved license, or one very close to it, whether it's MIT, Apache2, or GPL.

"Free software" is the only of the phrases that I see having two competing common definitions, the "free as in money", and "free as in Free Software Foundation's definition of free software". This seems pretty understandable, since "free" is overloaded.

I only infrequently see people mixing up "open source" and "source available", and that's the specific thing I'm trying to discourage people from mixing up. I think keeping those terms clear, and especially calling out "source available" software as _not_ being "open source" (i.e. not granting you the freedom to modify it or run your own copy in some cases) is important.

[folkrav]

I see the opposite often argued too - that open-source is too wide a term as could also be understood as source available, and that FOSS/FLOSS should be preffered. But you're right, looking at most literature, most people seem to refer to oss and foss to be largely the same thing. I guess my biases are showing lol

Coming back to the original argument - which was that React was not truly open-source - being MIT, it 100% is, so I still don't understand it. That they prioritize their own needs for feature development is pretty much irrelevant, the source is there and you have permission to fork, tweak and publish changes on your own at any time. You legally are in your own right, but they don't have to make it easy on you.

[Lammy]

Free Software == my project's code, to others

Open Source == other peoples' contributions, to my project's code

[TheDong]

I have not seen this distinction commonly.

Can you link to a reference?

As I understand it, "Free Software" is the term the FSF and general hacker community settled on for licenses that preserve user's freedom to modify and redistribute source code.

O'Reilly etc shifted to the term Open Source as part of making the idea less associated with "hacker culture", and more associated with businesses (as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software#End_of_19... )

From there, I see "Open source" being slightly more often associated with companies or younger developers, and "free software" more often being associated with the GNU project, copyleft projects, etc.

I'm curious if you have references or more explanation about the difference you're trying to draw, since it's one I haven't seen before.

[Lammy]

> I'm curious if you have references or more explanation about the difference you're trying to draw, since it's one I haven't seen before.

My distinction between the two is whether outside contributions make it back into the original project. Free Software is about the rights of end users to inspect the code and make and distribute their own modifications, but then Open Source takes it a bit further by explicitly soliciting contributions with the ostensible aim of building a better project through cooperative labor than an individual programmer could build alone.

In practice though "Open Source" has turned into unpaid project management work for billion-dollar corporations, bitter disputes between contributors over conflicting standards of morality, technical visions in constant flux as contributors come and go, and endless bikeshedding about semantic version numbers / code style guides / other things that don't matter. For years I thought I was totally burned out on Free Software and walked away from all of it, but what I was actually burned out on is Open Source and have been able to love programming again by working on things that are explicitly "Free Software but not Open Source".

The `actix-web` drama a few years ago is a perfect example, when a huge crowd of onlookers felt morally justified excoriating a popular project's creator / maintainer for not managing their project to the crowd's standards: https://steveklabnik.com/writing/a-sad-day-for-rust

[smw]

I don't think your distinction is actually part of a common world view.

[naoqj]

>Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose

??? Isn't React licenced under the MIT licence? It seems to me that it tickes all boxes?

[TheDong]

As I wrote at the top of my comment. "I agree with you that react is definitely open source" (and no, I did not edit that in, it was there when you read it)

I'm aware react is licensed under the MIT license. I was just talking about how the parent comment chose to define "open source".

[xcambar]

nowadays, it is expected that open source is also a synonym for “community-driven”, which is a very bold assumption.

I don’t know how we got to this point but it’s interesting to notice that the terminology drifted.

[picardo]

By that definition, any software project that is driven by a BDFL wouldn't be open source, including Linux.

The terminology hasn't drifted that much. I think there is a small and vocal group of people who are trying to take back "open source" by reframing what it means, so as to exclude corporate projects. It doesn't make sense to me.

[ksec]

>any software project that is driven by a BDFL wouldn't be open source, including Linux.

There are certainly a push in that direction. And that you need a group of people, core or council to be considered as Open Source. And Linux has that.

>The terminology hasn't drifted that much.

It depends how you measure it, but Twitter and HN are at least two places where lots of developers are suggesting Open Sources equals to Community driven. And yes, there are also some movement towards MIT, BSD or Apache 2.0 as being not considered as Open Source because they do not contribute back changes. Although that hasn't gotten any traction. ( yet )

[xcambar]

I was probably too implicit but when I wrote "which is a very bold assumption ", I also meant that I am in disagreement with the statement.

For me, open source and community-driven are not similar and I don't understand why people seem to expect it.

[renewiltord]

Everyone is going on tangents, but yes React is as open-source as they come. What people are conflating are the notion of community-driven and open-source.

React is a successful Facebook OSS project. An example of one which went poorly is Thrift. Facebook open-sourced it and then internally used fbthrift which diverged drastically. OSS Thrift isn't that popular these days any more.

[disgruntledphd2]

Hive is another good example of the same issue.

[naikrovek]

> How do you define "open source"? It typically simply means the source code is available.

that is not what that means. "source is available" and "open source" are very different.

[colinmhayes]

Disagree. We need to stop trying to cram meaning into phrases that are already defined. Open source means the source code is freely available. Adding anything else requires a different name.

[naikrovek]

"open" already has meaning.

> Disagree.

well, fortunately your agreement is not required. "open source" already has a definition and it requires openness.

[lala45]

Free Software is an established term, and React certainly is not Free Software, due to its patent. I very much doubt that React is Open Source either, for the same reason.

[galaxyLogic]

So react is MIT-licensed and has a patent. How do those two work together? If I modify React's source-code might I not infringe on the patent and then get sued by Meta?

[lala45]

I’m not a lawyer, but from my perspective, that’s indeed a concern. And perhaps you could get sued just by using React. It could differ between jurisdictions as well.

A standard open source license with a patent grant, like the Apache license, would have been a lot clearer, but Facebook has so far refused to license React in that way.

A problematic patent grant was offered for earlier versions of React but that’s not the case anymore (and didn’t really fix the problem anyway).

[galaxyLogic]

I'm not a lawyer either and I wonder about the scope of Apache patent grant. Does it give you the right to use any patents the software in question "uses" in any possible context? Or does it simply allow you to modify the software any way you like and not get sued for infringement? But then how much can I modify it and still retain the right to use those patents? I mean if I create a totally unrelated software package which however shares some code with the original work, can I keep on using those patents anyway I want?

[sneak]

No, open source means that the software is free software.

The source code to Windows is available.

[folkrav]

Urgh. Typical reminder never to let engineers name things. Whoever thought using "open source" for something else than "source is open"...

[hn_throwaway_99]

What's wrong with Flow, Jest or Graphql? I think these are all fantastic projects. I mean, Flow "lost out" to Typescript, but, it's usual for one winner to emerge from competing frameworks.

[cheeze]

Seriously. FB chose to open source these things. They could have kept them private but wanted to give back where they could.

IMO that should be celebrated, not shitting on fb for their poor track record of going out of their way to open their source code to the public.

I hate meta as much as the next, but come on.

[paulhodge]

Graphql is great. With Jest, that project feels a little abandoned because the Typescript support (ts-jest) is pretty janky and has bad performance. Meanwhile in the ecosystem in 2022, it's becoming the norm to have first-class Typescript support.

[tptacek]

React is MIT-licensed. It is, of course, open source. If you don't like their decisions, fork it.

[lala45]

React is patented and Facebook is actively choosing not to offer a patent grant, so unfortunately that’s not the whole story.

A fork may not be an option. Perhaps a given organization may not even be allowed to use React, if Facebook decides against it for some reason. Jurisdictions can differ as well.

In my opinion, the best thing would be if Facebook simply made the terms clear by using the Apache license or similar. But hey, it’s Facebook, so I’m not expecting much…

[ksec]

>React is patented and Facebook is actively choosing not to offer a patent grant,

By that definition any "Open Source " MIT or BSD licenses that does not offer patent grant has problems.

[bjt]

What patents does Facebook have on React?