| I understand your frustration. IME, HN tends to use the term open source in two senses. It can either refer to: - the license or; - the business model. And we know that licenses exist on a spectrum of permissive to restrictive. So when the community is presented with a for-profit entity in a Launch/Show HN, they tend to dwell on the 2nd sense. If it’s a side project that’s on display, then the 1st sense kicks in. Based on this, I’d like to offer the following colloquial interpretations for the terms you mentioned. 1. Open source: permissive (or more correctly, well-known) licenses like MIT, Apache, BSD, GPL, LGPL etc that do not prohibit commercial derivatives (or prevent cloud hyperscalers like AWS from using it). 2. Open core: our code is split into 2 parts: the open source bit (often under a permissive open source license in #1) to attract fellow devs and the closed source bit. The closed source bit is how we plan to make money. 3. Source available: we plan to make money however we see best so as insurance, our code can only be available under an obscure license that was designed to be restrictive. So, I think what’s really happening is that labelling something “open source” will cause the community to quickly to point out that said license is restrictive. |
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37122927 )