this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
376 points (98.0% liked)
Technology
59974 readers
3473 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Also more things now call themselfs "open source" even not being like that. AnyType or Llama AI for example.
I'm pretty sure Anytype is finally open sourcing their code after years of it being in alpha though?
Source is available to the public under their own custom licence, but you cannot use it commercially. Server side is closed. So you just know there is no malware inside and you can propose a bugfix, that's not enough to be open source, yet they misleading call it that.
If you can look at the source code it is open source.
You seem to be using the term "open source" for what is instead commonly called "source-available", which has a distinct meaning from open source.
edit: fixed duplicated phrasing
No I am using the term for how it was originally used, back in the free software movement days in the 70s and 80s.
Open source means nothing more than the source beeing open for all to see. What your are describing we called Free Software or later FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) but the open source part is redundant in that acronym.
Also some started using Libre instead of Free, as Free sometimes are confused with Gratis. That is where the expression Free as in Freedom cones from.
Fair enough. I suppose the terminology has evolved somewhat with time, and I can't say I have much insight into a time period from before I was born.
It has evolved of cause. One of the sources you referred to, the OSI, has a clear agenda to define the term open source software according to their own definition. They are advocating that we use the term in the more narrow sense as you described, rather than the more original broad sense.
The Wikipedia article basically just cites OSIs definition. If you dig into the talk page on Wikipedia it is clearly a disbuted definition that is currently written.
While I absolutely am a proponent of free, libre or open source software, no matter what we call it, the narrow definition OSI suggests of open source software is still not how most people understand the term.
Narrowing the term open source software the way OSI proposes increases the confusion, it doesn't help.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. By definition this is true.
Visible source is still open source , but it isn’t FOSS. Not everything open source is FOSS, but everything FOSS is open source.
Exactly. Also it is interesting how I am getting downvoted while you are getting upvoted - even though we are saying the same thing.
I can't imagine the downvoting being anything other than a disagreement with that word usage. Strictly speaking words do not have definitions which are "true" in some innate sense - they have usages which are popular or unpopular among different groups of people.
The term "open source" without any context describes "source" being "open" - as clear as mud. With context that describes a range of software licenses and the disagreement is in which licenses that includes.
It's quite ironic to see people getting confused over it, since part of the justifications for the creation of the "open source" term was "free software" being ambiguous.
This guy is deliberately being malicious
There's a reason RMS hates the term "open source". Open source is a cheaper imitation of Free software.
From Wikipedia:
From Open Source Initiative:
AnyType is "source available". Open Source is a term exisiting for many years with already established precise meaning and messing it up makes much harm in a world where talking about computing morality is already messed up with the lack of words in public awareness, as computer software is very abstract and need proper terminology.
You are cherry-picking quite a bit in that Wikipedia article. There is also a whole section discussing the confusion between the terms open source, free and libre.
I would venture that the most commonly understood definition of the term is that open source software simply means what it says, that the source code is openly available. And nothing more.
Free or libre software expresses the intention you describe explicitly, that the recipient is allowed to share and modify the software. Thus removing ambiguity.
Open Source is indeed a term existing for many years, probably a lot longer than you are thinking about. Trying to redefine that as meaning anything more than what is says is what is causing confusion.
This is why "open source" is garbage. Call it libre.
I agree, it is much more clear. I do like Free also, but it is confusing in English.
I prefer the term libre (free software, usually say software freedom) but there is a related disagreement regarding Copyleft being more or less libre (GPL vs MIT).
Who argues about copyleft and libre? The FSF and Stallman are clear about libre meaning the same as free.
MIT is just as free/libre as GPL, but copyleft is the logical choice when you value user freedom.
I mean I have seen many comments over the years in favour of MIT over GPL because 'it gives more freedom' without the restrictions imposed by GPL's copyleft. This is just anecdotal so maybe not many have that view.
I assume you didn't consider source code can get leaked.
Open source =/= FOSS
They had opened sourced part of, but not all of it.
Then it's 100% proprietary.
I think they opened up the client, but not the server part. They also use some goofy license.
They're not really open source, no. But they do at least support open standards.