[ezekg]

> The only place I've ever seen anyone pretend that "open source" can legitimately mean something other than the OSI's definition is on this forum.

I don’t think this is entirely accurate in practice. I talk to businesses, individuals, and enterprises every single day and they all refer to my SAS as open source software. So I don’t think everybody sees OSS like you and OSI wills them to. I’m stepping on toes by saying that, but from my sample size, that’s what I see and hear.

The only places I’ve seen this dogma is here on HN, in GitHub issues about gaslighting [^0], and on r/opensource.

[^0]: https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/issues/40 (and other linked issues therein)

[bruce511]

>> I talk to businesses, individuals, and enterprises every single day and they all refer to my SAS as open source software.

I know it gets tedious, but its useful to politely correct this terminology when it's used incorrectly.

I get that managers are not techies, but allowing them to use this term is harmful to them.

A) they heard the term from one of their programmers, which means the programmer doesn't understand the difference, which can lead to legal troubles or

B) they know the term, but use it incorrectly here, which they could then say to an actual programmer, which he then treats as open source, and can cause legal troubles.

[godelski]

> I get that managers are not techies, but allowing them to use this term is harmful to them.

All I'm saying is that if the words you use have a reasonable interpretation that is different from what is intended, it is better to just adopt new phrasing.

> which can lead to legal troubles

I very much doubt this. LeCun has been calling MAIR's work Open Source for quite awhile and people have been arguing about it being Source Available and not Open Source™. IANAL but I have a feeling that if OSI took Meta to court that they would lose, just like I expect Taco John to lose Taco Tuesday and how Bayer lost aspirin. I'd say that the case would probably even be clearer than those, as all Meta needs is a dictionary. I'm sure there's something similar to Roger's test for this.

Fwiw, I don't know a single person, in the flesh, that thinks Open Source is different from Source Available. My bubble is mostly nerds and techy folks. I was only introduced to the OSI definition here on HN, and I was already starting graduate school by that time, even having work experience developing software. I'm not sure what bubble I'm in or the "OSI's definition is well known" is in, but clearly we have to recognize that at least people like me exist. It seems like we're not uncommon either.

[bruce511]

I didn't mean legal troubles as in from OSI,but legal troubles from a copyright holder if the source is treated as Open by a programmer.

Open software can be distributed freely. If a programmer is told it is Open, there is a chance they will unwittingly use it in a way that is not permissable under the actual license terms.

Even as an honest mistake, this can lead to serious copyright violations that some companies will not hesitate to demand payment for.

[memefrog]

>Fwiw, I don't know a single person, in the flesh, that thinks Open Source is different from Source Available.

Then educate them. Open source has had a stable definition since before I was born. It is not up for debate. All of a sudden in the last couple of years shitty people have tried to confuse people by labelling non-free licenses 'open source'. That is fraudulent.

[ezekg]

The problem is that I'm not talking to managers when seeing the term open source, most of the time I'm talking to programmers. Literally all techies.

Many of them can use, modify, and distribute my SAS free of charge, like every other OSS license they know, so it actually won't get them into legal trouble. My SAS is open source to them, because the ELv2 only has a single usage restriction and that's not their use-case. For most, it's more permissive than GPL/AGPL!

I'm not going to correct them.

[bruce511]

Fair enough. If your license makes it "virtual Open Source" in their hands, then they can call it as such and use it as such.

And sure, while ELv2 is not an OSI open license, it's not exactly a proprietary license either. So the line here is very blurred.

Your position in this case makes sense.

[pydry]

>The only places I’ve seen this dogma is here on HN, in GitHub issues about gaslighting [^0], and on r/opensource.

Part of the problem is the "Open Software Foundation" likes to take a bunch of corporate money and then pen definitions of what "really is" and "really isn't" open source that people pick up on.

[memefrog]

They established the definition and nobody had a problem with it for decades. It has nothing to do with money.