[anon-3988]

There's more to open source than just the code or output, it is also the community. There's apparenticeship, sharing of knowledge, sense of comradery, supporting each other, etc.

My day job uses a lot of open source libraries and projects, and do you know what we do when we fix things? We fork internally and don't upstream any patches.

Do you not see a loss here?

With LLMs, there's even LESS reason to keep up with upstream. We would probably just ask LLM to keep up with the changes commit by commit.

[Aeolun]

> There's more to open source than just the code or output, it is also the community. There's apparenticeship, sharing of knowledge, sense of comradery, supporting each other, etc.

No there is not. That’s what you impose on it. My code is open, free, and unencumbered. If I don’t want you using it you don’t see it at all. The licenses are there to make people happy.

[throwaway17_17]

I think your idealized list of attributes of “open source” is admirable. However, the apprenticeship, comradery, and support are a specific and often sought out feature of some development ‘communities’ for specific software. I’d also say that the ‘loss’ when fixes, updates, optimizations of open source software is not up-streamed is real, but this has very little to do with adopting or promoting the externalities (no matter how laudable) you want to see in certain software’s development.

I personally don’t care about the community, its composition, or its internal structure for a lot of software I use. Even when I’m compiling from source and customizing smaller applications for personal efficiency, I’m not usually interested in being a part of some distributed community centered on that software. Some times I am engaged in the community and appreciate it and the work required to maintain that community. But in either case, the software is “open source”.

[foobarian]

That's all great, but to me the primary point is rms' original grievance with that printer driver. If the source is open, anyone can improve it. Multiple anyones can improve it! They can even collaborate on message boards and make a nice community, but this is certainly not a requirement.