[JimDabell]

Open source is not merely a license choice. It is a reformulation of free software to make it more attractive to businesses. The entire point behind open source is that it is more effective for businesses to develop software collaboratively with the public than it is to do it in private. So yes, open source does imply open community.

If you want to dump code onto the public with a permissive license but not develop that software collaboratively, then sure, you can do that, and the code will be open source code. Opening the code is a good thing and there’s no obligation for you to do anything more. But it isn’t doing what open source was designed to do; it’s ignoring a key part of it.

The people that see open source code and assume that it is being developed collaboratively are not being unreasonable – that’s the purpose of the open source movement. If that’s an inaccurate assumption for your software, then that’s fine – but it’s you that is breaking social norms, not them.

[BrandonM]

When you talk about the point or purpose of open source, what are you referring to? I think of Stallman, print drivers, and users owning their work, so your assertions about the point of open source ring false to me.

[JimDabell]

You’re getting open source and free software mixed up. As I said, Open Source was a reformulation of Free Software to make it more business-friendly. Free Software is fundamentally a moral stance (it is wrong to prevent sharing); Open Source is fundamentally a pragmatic stance (building software is better when it is publicly collaborative).

[evanelias]

Considering that Free Software predates Open Source, and many popular OSI-approved licenses also predate Open Source, how can you justify your core claim upthread:

> The people that see open source code and assume that it is being developed collaboratively are not being unreasonable – that’s the purpose of the open source movement. If that’s an inaccurate assumption for your software, then that’s fine – but it’s you that is breaking social norms, not them.

It sounds like you think anyone who selects an OSI-approved license, and makes the code publicly available, is somehow explicitly opting-in to the Open Source movement, and users should "reasonably" expect collaborative development as the default. Is that accurate? Because it seems completely nonsensical to me, especially considering the licenses predate the movement.

When you come across a random project using an OSI-approved license, there's no way to know the developers' motivations for selecting that license, if they haven't explicitly stated it. Your default seems to be an assumption that they're opting in to the "open source movement" and all of the social norms that you wrap up in that, but your assumption can be completely wrong, and that doesn't mean the developers are "breaking social norms" of a movement that they never subscribed to in the first place!

[em-bee]

that's an interesting point. how important was user participation in the development of software for RMS? he wanted to be able to share his modifications with anyone. presumably that includes upstream. so even if not said explicitly, i'd argue that collaboration was implied.

[jraph]

Not really. RMS wanted to guarantee user freedom, first and foremost.

[jraph]

OP says open source is a reformulation of free software.

Stallman created free software and is distinctly against open source, which is more or less free software but without the philosophy, the concern for user rights [1]. Associating RMS and his printer with the purpose of open source would somewhat be a mistake / a faux pas (but would be nailing it for the purpose of free software!).

The purpose of free software is user freedom (and not the cooperative development). The original purpose of open source is selling the idea of free software to the corporate world by making it less scary to them, by trying to remove its political part. [I suspect the people who created open source might have been sensitive to the user freedom aspect and wanted to convince corporate to do free software for this reason but thought that hiding this part was a good strategy [2, 3]. I personally think this was a fatal mistake: nowadays, although the infrastructure is mostly open source (and has been succeeding in this regard), end user facing software is still mostly proprietary exactly because software companies don't think they ought to do free software.]

I don't think the cooperative development part is in the purpose of open source. In any case, the open source definition and the free software definition don't concern themselves with this and are purely about what you can do with the code.

Of course open source development models are intimately bound to open source and free software but and were one of the things sold to corporate as more efficient.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Perens#cite_note-18

[3] "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again" http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/debian-devel-19990...

[engeljohnb]

Why is everyone in this thread ignoring the fact that the world already had this debate 30 years ago, so the OSI published a document clearly specifying what is and isn't Open Source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition

It doesn't say anything about collaborative development.

[JimDabell]

I’m well aware of the OSD, but we are talking about social norms, not distribution terms.

Direct from the OSI:

> The conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also believed that it would be useful to have a single label that identified this approach and distinguished it from the philosophically- and politically-focused label “free software.” Brainstorming for this new label eventually converged on the term “open source”, originally suggested by Christine Peterson.

— https://opensource.org/about/history-of-the-open-source-init...

“Participating in an engaged community” has been an intrinsic part of Open Source from the beginning.

[engeljohnb]

It's so fundamental they didn't include it in the definition?

>Open source is not merely a license choice.

Yes it is. The OSD only deals with licenses, therefore whether a software has a "community" has no bearing on whether it's open source.

You're claiming the terms laid out in the OSD were motivated by hopes of cultivating a community, but the reasons behind the document are immaterial to this discussion. It only matters how "open source" is defined, and it's plainly not defined by the presence of any community.

[JimDabell]

> You're claiming the terms laid out in the OSD were motivated by hopes of cultivating a community

I didn’t say that. I didn’t bring up the OSD at all. In fact I was explicitly talking about a broader concept than simply license terms from my very first sentence. You were the one that started talking about the OSD.

> It only matters how "open source" is defined, and it's plainly not defined by the presence of any community.

The OSD defines criteria by which software licenses can be considered open source. It doesn’t define the movement as a whole.

[engeljohnb]

>> You're claiming the terms laid out in the OSD were motivated by hopes of cultivating a community.

> I didn’t say that.

If you don't think the statement's true, then what exactly is the meaning of this passage, and what was your purpose in quoting it?

> ... and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community.

The thesis of the post is that publishing Open Source software doesn't carry an obligation of maintaining a community. To determine if that's true, what software counts as open source is relevant information. Anything to do with the "movement" isn't.

Your original comment started with the words "Open Source is..." If there's an authoritative document specifying exactly what Open Source is, and it plainly contradicts what you say, then you're wrong.

> Open source is not merely a license choice.

> The OSD defines criteria by which software licenses can be considered open source.

These two statements are exactly contradictory.

[JimDabell]

> > >> You're claiming the terms laid out in the OSD were motivated by hopes of cultivating a community.

> > I didn’t say that.

> If you don't think the statement's true

I didn’t say that either. Is it really so difficult for you to respond to what I actually say?

I am talking about cultural norms. You are trying to cram what I am saying into something that is purely about license terms. I am repeatedly telling you that I am not talking about license terms and you are repeatedly ignoring that.

> If there's an authoritative document specifying exactly what Open Source is, and it plainly contradicts what you say, then you're wrong.

Again, the OSD defines criteria for licenses, it does not define the movement as a whole. I am talking about the movement, not license terms. If you are unwilling to engage with that point, then don’t. But stop mischaracterising what I am saying.

> > Open source is not merely a license choice.

> > The OSD defines criteria by which software licenses can be considered open source.

> These two statements are exactly contradictory.

They are not. Every time I say “Open Source” you are reading “OSD” but I am repeatedly telling you I am talking about the movement, not the OSD that talks about license terms.

[rpdillon]

I talked to Simon Phipps about this back in the mid-2000s, so I understand where you're coming from, even if I disagree.

I'm curious whether you classify chromium, AOSP, or sqlite as open source.

[JimDabell]

> I'm curious whether you classify chromium, AOSP, or sqlite as open source.

They are open source software, but they aren’t following the social norms of the open source movement. They are within their rights to develop as they see fit and label their software as open source software, but it’s also reasonable for people to have different expectations and to be surprised when these projects do not collaborate with the public.