this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023

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Dilution of the term "Open Source?" (self.opensource)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by TootSweet to c/[email protected]

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Is it just me or is passing off things that aren't FOSS as FOSS a much bigger thing lately than it was previously.

Don't get me wrong. I remember Microsoft's "shared source" thing from back in the day. So I know it's not a new thing per se. But it still seems like it's suddenly a bigger problem than it was previously.

LLaMa, the large language model, is billed by Meta as "Open Source", but isn't.

I just learned today about "Grayjay," a video streaming service client app created by Louis Rossmann. Various aticles out there are billing it as "Open Source" or "FOSS". It's not. Grayjay's license doesn't allow commercial redistribution or derivative works. Its source code is available to the general public, but that's far from sufficient to qualify as "Open Source." (That article even claims "GrayJay is an open-source app, which means that users are free to alter it to meet their specific needs," but Grayjay's license grants no license to create modified versions at all.) FUTO, the parent project of Grayjay pledges on its site that "All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open-source or develop a plan to eventually become so." I hope that means that they'll be making Grayjay properly Open Source at some point. (Maybe once it's sufficiently mature/tested?) But I worry that they're just conflating "source available" and "Open Source."

I've also seen some sentiment around that "whatever, doesn't matter if it doesn't match the OSI's definition of Open Source. Source available is just as good and OSI doesn't get a monopoly on the term 'Open Source' anyway and you're being pedantic for refusing to use the term 'Open Source' for this program that won't let you use it commercially or make modifications."

It just makes me nervous. I don't want to see these terms muddied. If that ultimately happens and these terms end up not really being meaningful/helpful, maybe the next best thing is to only speak in terms of concrete license names. We all know the GPL, MIT, BSD, Apache, Mozilla, etc kind of licenses are unambiguously FOSS licenses in the strictest sense of the term. If a piece of software is under something that doesn't have a specific name, then the best we'd be able to do is just read it and see if it matches the OSI definition or Free Software definition.

Until then, I guess I'll keep doing my best to tell folks when something's called FOSS that isn't FOSS. I'm not sure what else to do about this issue, really.

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[–] p_q 1 points 10 months ago

it's thoose kind of people you want to keep away from important stuff, so you know "open source" is the thing, man! ;-)

[+] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] TootSweet 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Honestly great question.

While "Free Software" and "Open Source" have different definitions, and the movements behind them have largely different motivations, in practice I've heard mostly that there are no pieces of software that qualify as one but not the other. So in practice, they're equivalent when referring to software licenses (though not so much when referring to the communities/movements.)

Are FOSS and Open Source now synonymous because OSI dropped the term free?

I'm not really sure there's any sense in which the OSI ever used the term "free." The Free Software movement used the term "free" and the Open Source movement and the OSI were born out of a splinter group that broke off from the Free Software movement.

I think terms like FOSS and FLOSS are popular partly because again when speaking of software the two are (or at least in practice might as well be) synonymous.

I think there's also a certain extent to which both the Free Software foks and the Open Source folks recognize that a bit of solidarity between the two groups will ultimately benefit both. So each is willing to give nods to the other by sticking an "F" on the front of their "OSS" or an "OSS" on the end of their "FL" or whatever.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] TootSweet 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

why do we have two different terms?

Well, I do think it's still quite useful to have separate terms for the movements. I'd say it's probably safe to say that "Free Software advocates" believe that all software should be FLOSS whereas "Open Source advocates" think it's fine for FLOSS and proprietary software to coexist in the whole software ecosystem.

Would we be having issues over the term "source available" vs. "open source" if the Free was never dropped from Free Software?

That's an interesting question. The term "Free Software" is kindof tied up in connections to Richard Stallman. (Say what you will about that, but having a well-known personality at the head of a movement, even if it has disadvantages, does have upsides.) And the dude is the avatar of pedantism. And I think to anyone with even a passing familiarity with Stallman, that comes through when you use the term "Free Software." To the point that it's hard to imagine the term used to mean something other than the four freedoms.

Meanwhile, I imagine a lot of people, when they use the term "Open Source" don't think of any particular person. Eric Raymond and Bruce Parens are much less known than Stallman.

"Open Source" is a term that's also much closer to the mainstream. Folks who say "Open Source" are "normies". If someone uses the term "Free Software" you can likely expect an hour long lecture from them on why the term "GNU Plus Linux" is better than "GNU Slash Linux".

I think maybe when companies started "open washing" (a term I just learned) efforts, "Open Source" was a much easier target for dilution than "Free Software." Because again, when you think of the term "Free Software," you think of pedantic Stallman listing off the easy-to-enumerate four freedoms. When you think of the term "Open Source," you probably think of a Firefox logo and not Raymond or Parens and not really the ten specific points in the OSI definition.

So in a way, I wonder if "Open Source" hasn't served as a bit of a shield for "Free Software". Because "Open Source" was the easier target and "Free Software" is a much more niche concept. (And also arguably because Linus/Linux is more associated with Open Source than Free Software.)

Historically, if the term "Open Source" was never coined, I imagine people would have tried to dilute the term "Free Software". I suspect they may have had less success, but not no success. And in that case, the term "Free Software" would be eroded today in ways it's not given that "Open Source" served as a buffer protecting "Free Software."

What benefit is there in referring to FOSS as Open Source as opposed to FOSS?

Ah. Well, I could see people who use the term "Open Source" loosely also using "FOSS" loosely more so than I could see them using "Free Software" loosely. But I suppose if someone usrs the term "FOSS", there's... I guess a stronger case that they shouldn't be using the term loosely than if they're using the term "Open Source."

I'm not saying I'm ok with using the term "Open Source" loosely. But I did admit there may be a possibility we need to start thinking in terms of choosing our battles in the OP.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No modification at all is pretty bad, but Rossman in his video simply said he wants to avoid scam like whats happening to Newpipe.

[–] TootSweet 1 points 10 months ago

Hmm. Good to know his reasoning, I guess. I'm not sure how he thinks that license will prevent that, but at least that makes his thoughts clear.

[–] p_q -2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

free

open source ≠ free

open source ≈ source code published

it's free software

[–] FooBarrington 2 points 10 months ago

Source code published without being open source is usually called "source available".

[–] TootSweet 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

When I use the term "Open Source" I mean [the OSI definition]https://opensource.org/osd/), which is what the term meant from its inception. If you want to talk about "source code published" software, use a different term. Don't appropriate "Open Source" or think you're representative of the Open Source community.

When you say "free" here, do you mean this or something else?

[–] p_q 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

seems like someone tried to solve a problem by declaring

"open source ≈ freesoftware"

You can compile a binary by using the provided code and it gives you a binary, yes.

you modify the code, compile, sell the binary, because "they provided the code" opensours.org said "it means free software" "free as in freedom" so "I am free to do whatever I want with this software." "

That is untrue. I can open source my product for a reason, but if anyone try to sell it it's a crime. I openenly show everyone my source code, but without the right licence it's nothing. often you can't even compare it to the software running.

[–] FooBarrington 1 points 10 months ago

That is untrue. I can open source my product for a reason, but if anyone try to sell it it's a crime. I openenly show everyone my source code, but without the right licence it's nothing. often you can't even compare it to the software running.

No, that's not true. If you open source your product, anyone else can sell it just fine. They can't do so if you don't open source it (i.e. if you make it source available).

Just because you think "open source" means "source available" doesn't mean they are legally equivalent.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago (13 children)

Its source code is available to the general public, but that's far from sufficient to qualify as "Open Source."

The main qualifier for open-source projects is that the source code is open.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What do you mean by that

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What do you mean what do I mean? I don't know how to be more clear.

[–] TootSweet 1 points 10 months ago

"Open" to what? Perusal? Modification? Copying? Distribution? Attack?

The OSI's definition says it must be open to all of those (except attack which I only added to illustrate how widely differently your statement could be interpreted) and more.

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[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The term "open source" was confusing from the beginning. Insisting on "free software" has kind of an autistic vibe to it. "Libre" will probably not catch on. I like your idea of just calling it "GPL" or "MIT licenced" software etc

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Exactly, "open source" was a dilution of free software in the first place. Kids today.

[–] BetaDoggo_ -5 points 10 months ago

In the case of Machine learning the term has sort of been morphed to mean "open weights" as well as open inference/training code. To me the OSI is just being elitist and gate keeping the term.

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