[dahart]

I’m a fan of OSI, and their definition of “open source” is widely recognized, but still, language policing usually turns out to be incorrect. OSI didn’t invent the term open source, and like it or not, other definitions do exist that don’t meet OSI’s standards. The term doesn’t belong to any one organization. I don’t understand the confrontational stance either, with code being offered to individuals. That far exceeds what most companies do, in terms of serving the open source community, no?

[type0]

Open source concept existed before OSI, it has originated from Debian Free Software Guidelines. OSI has only standardised it. To claim something else is disingenuous and at this point it's proven to be a robust definition. FSF has their own, older and not too dissimilar.

> other definitions do exist that don’t meet OSI’s standards. The term doesn’t belong to any one organization.

And all attempts to redefine what open source means fail, because both FOSS camps OSI and FSF/GNU as well as everyone in between see it for what it is: attempts to muddy the water in order to deceive users and customers. Your software is either FOSS or it's not, there is no scale here, it's a social contract. Just because there are a bunch of ambiguous licenses that no-one knows what to make of, doesn't mean there are two or more concepts. There's only one concept for both "open source" and "free software" and the difference is philosophical.

[dahart]

Nobody tried to redefine “open source” here in this thread. @xenago jumped to an incorrect conclusion.

> There’s only one concept for both “open source” and “free software”

Well neither OSI nor FSF agree with this statement. You’re on your own there.

[mod50ack]

The term doesn't belong to the OSI. But the basic tenets of the OSI definition are very important to devs. And source being available but not able to be legally reused makes it useless for the vast majority of FOSS projects.

[dahart]

I agree. I’m not arguing against the value or the stature of OSI’s definition at all, I’m only reacting to the demand to never say the words “open source” unless you mean OSI’s definition. The Robustness Principle applies to language; be conservative in what you say, and liberal in what you hear. It’s fine to point out when a license or particular software isn’t OSI-approved open source. It’s fine to ask if people mean OSI when they say “open source” without a qualifier. It’s fine to add a qualifier too.

[mod50ack]

There is a difference between strictly following the OSI definition and the general idea of "open source." For instance, while "open source" and "free software" are effectively interchangeable category definitions, there are some minor technical reasons why the FSF definition allows a few licenses the OSI definition doesn't and vice versa. If we were talking about "oh, this is accepted by the FSF as free software, but not by the OSI as open source," then OK, sure. And you could go on with Debian and Fedora approvals and so on.

But we're not talking about technicalities here. We're talking about the vey basic idea of what it means to be "open source." I'm not telling anyone that they can't use words however they want. They can. But the way they're using the term "open source" is just fundamentally incompatible with how the vast majority of people in the field use it. So it's at the very least going to cause some confusion to use the term "open source" in the way they are.

Besides, I think people have a bigger problem with the licensing change itself than any wordsmithery.

[dahart]

> I’m not telling anyone that they can’t use words however they want. They can.

It sounds like we are in full agreement, and you’re with me that @xenago’s demand to not use the phrase might be overstepping a little bit, no? Isn’t this confusion easier to clear up with a single short question than with assumptions or demands?

There is a slight problem with claiming using “open source” is confusing to the people who know about OSI. To the lay person who’s not a software developer, “open source” does mean ‘source is visible’, and “free software” does mean ‘software that costs no money’ (and these definitions are included in dictionaries and Wikipedia, next to the OSI and FSF versions). The OSI and FSF definitions are terms of art that these orgs are trying to establish and control, and they deviate from what the literal words alone imply, both in meaning and level of specificity, therefore they will always be confusing to people who are neither developers nor lawyers. Wouldn’t it be better if FSF and OSI relied not on co-opting everyday words, but having phrases that are more obviously terms of art and more obviously attached to the orgs? Even something as simple as “OSI Open Source” or “FSF Free Software” would go a long way. OSI does on it’s site use “OSD - Open Source Definition” quite a bit.

[type0]

> To the layperson who’s not a software developer, “open source” does mean ‘source is visible’, and “free software” does mean ‘software that costs no money’

Source available is the correct term. Laymen who don't know any better often call shareware open source as well; they don't know how the software is made and don't care. That is not a good reason to use incorrect words.

[dahart]

Serious question: what, exactly, is “correct”, and who says? BTW I’ve never heard “source available” used outside of discussions about OSI and FSF.

[pjmlp]

At the end of the day, what matters is how it stands in court.

[mod50ack]

No, we don't agree at all.

The whole point is that they are trying to use the words "open source" to appeal specifically to people, like those here in this thread, who work on free and open source software in the FSF/OSI sense.

This is a message for the exact group of people who use the term of art because they're practitioners of that art.

[dahart]

> No, we don’t agree at all.

Oh okay. I was trying to tell you I agreed with what you said, but if you insist: Okay, fine then I disagree with you. Naw, I still agree with what you said. I don’t know what you’re disagreeing with at all, you haven’t made that clear. Consider the possibility that we might be, as the phrase goes, agreeing violently.

> they are trying to use the words “open source” to appeal specifically to people

Who is “they”? The top comment was referring to Apache 2.0, which is an OSI approved license. So, what, exactly, are you thrashing against here?

> This is a message for the exact group of people who use the term of art because they’re practitioners of that art.

Exactly! Sorry for saying this again, but I agree with that sentence. My point, which does not disagree with what you just said, is that because they are the practitioners, they are the people who know and use the term of art know better and should be the least likely to be confused when someone doesn’t use their term of art, and most likely to be able to handle the disambiguating gracefully like adults without getting upset or whinging that their term of art wasn’t used. They should be the people who best understand that their term of art has a special and overloaded meaning next to the literal words and some common non-term-of-art usage of those words.

This is all academic, the top comment was using the term of art in all of its overloaded glory. All I’m saying is that @xenago’s response is a bit inappropriate no matter what, regardless of whether it was the term-of-art usage or the lay-person usage, even if it was intentionally misleading (which it wasn’t). What you said appeared to agree with that, because you said “I’m not telling anyone that they can’t use words however they want”. So it does in fact continue to sound like you and I are agreeing on this point, among others.

[lmm]

> I’m a fan of OSI, and their definition of “open source” is widely recognized, but still, language policing usually turns out to be incorrect.

I'm no fan of the OSI, but language policing usually turns out to be correct. There are other definitions of open source - the free software definition, the DFSG - but in practice they're all close enough that the differences don't matter.

> OSI didn’t invent the term open source, and like it or not, other definitions do exist that don’t meet OSI’s standards.

Very few. I don't think there's any nontrivial software that doesn't meet the OSI's standards but is recognised as open-source by anyone who isn't a) a paid shill or b) a self-important provocateur who wrote it.

> I don’t understand the confrontational stance either, with code being offered to individuals. That far exceeds what most companies do, in terms of serving the open source community, no?

Companies are trying to salami-slice away the rights users expect from open-source software. The response to that has to be a firm line in the sand.