One of the criteria of the most often used definition of open source [0] is that the program is free to use and modify for all purposes. So a noncommercial license would not qualify as open source. This is also a requirement of the free software definition of the FSF, which is also often used to define free/open source.
GNU zealouts (and I consider myself one) need to take a deep breath and re-think what is being said.
It *IS* accurate to say that the program and source must be free to use for all purposes the recipient wants including commercial.
This was an involved conversation that was had during the 90's and yes, "no commercial reuse allowed" licenses are not -in fact- free licenses. I might be wrong but I have the impression they are not allowed on debian cds/dvds for that reason.
> If I use a piece of software that has been obtained under the GNU GPL, am I allowed to modify the original code into a new program, then distribute and sell that new program commercially? (#GPLCommercially)
> You are allowed to sell copies of the modified program commercially, but only under the terms of the GNU GPL. Thus, for instance, you must make the source code available to the users of the program as described in the GPL, and they must be allowed to redistribute and modify it as described in the GPL.
> These requirements are the condition for including the GPL-covered code you received in a program of your own.
Wrong. Open Source does not have to bend the knee to whatever proprietary license you can dream up and shove into your code base.
>Source code: The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
Does this apply to Linux? Check.
>Derived works: The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
Does this apply to Linux? Check.
Please visit https://opensource.org/licenses/ to see all of the licenses that are generally agreed upon to be Open Source licenses.
"open source" has a broader English meaning that predates the OSI for at least several decades. OSI does not have a trademark on "open source" because of this.
This is the software licensing world's version of "a hotdog is not a sandwich"
A lot of people confuse, say, Switzerland and Sweden, but this does not make it valid to call either by the other name. Likewise, “Open Source” has a precise definition, and people being confused does not make it less so. Of course, a lot of people are not actually confused, but are engaging disingenuously in order to dilute the term, so that they can use it for their own ends.
English isn't prescriptive. In English, if people use a word or a phrase to mean a thing, it means that thing. OSI has a widely observed technical definition, but it is not universal, and more colloquial uses of the word are recognized by linguists because they factually exist.
The definition of “open source” is universally agreed upon to have the OSI-defined meaning, except for some people:
1. Intelligence community people, who have long understood the term “open source” to mean a source of intelligence which is not itself secret.
2. People who, without having ever looked it up, assume it means that the source code is available for reading. These people are simply ignorant, and should be using the term “source available” instead, since it means exactly that.
3. People who want to be able to use the “open source” term for their software to gain goodwill, but don’t want to actually give all of the freedoms it should guarantee. These people are dishonest shills who try to confuse the debate in order to get away with fraudulent labeling.
> People who want to be able to use the “open source” term for their software to gain goodwill, but don’t want to actually give all of the freedoms it should guarantee.
Or is "open source" just a term for "free" as in beer software that doesn't actually give people all the freedoms it should guarantee? Because that's what the FSF thinks.
Different people have different ideas about what freedoms people "should" have. Nobody is being dishonest about software freedoms when the BSD-4-clause was written, CC0 or when they write licenses with 'no evil' or 'no nuclear proliferation' clauses.
> Or is "open source" just a term for "free" as in beer software that doesn't actually give people all the freedoms it should guarantee? Because that's what the FSF thinks.
No it isn’t. The OSI invented the term "Open Source” as applied to software, and they get to define its meaning as what they intended.
You misread my comment. That page explains why the FSF does in fact believe that open source software does not give people the freedoms it "should" guarantee.
The freedoms that a license "should" convey is not a fact, it is an opinion. And there are more than a few valid and honest opinions that exist, even beyond the opinions of FSF/OSI/CC/UCB/USG/Apache/FAANG/whoever
I disagree. You don’t get to decide what words mean. Open source means open source, that’s it. If you want it to mean something else you should’ve chosen a phrase that didn’t already have a meaning.
Sometimes old words and terms acquire new meanings. The only meaning “Open Source” had before the OSI was the intelligence “open sources” meaning. Is this the only meaning of “Open Source” you accept? If not, what is your definition, and why should that prevail over the OSI definition?
I accept that different people think it means different things, which makes me want to create a new phrase that doesn't already have a meaning. open software? Not sure, but communication is hard when you co-opt phrases that have intuitive meaning and try to supercede that.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition