A WebGL canvas-based volume viewer

I suppose this is quite relevant here: https://words.steveklabnik.com/the-culture-war-at-the-heart-...

> However this also allows authors to reserve rights for commercializing their work later on and it's an absolutely fair arrangement.

They could've also used AGPL for that. A popular option.

The license says, "For purposes of this license, commercial purposes is the incorporation of the Allen Institute's software into anything for which you will charge fees or other compensation." Does that include ads? It certainly seems to include donations. And I suppose requiring attribution could be seen as "other compensation". It's kinda broad, but even if it was strictly "don't sell this standalone", it still wouldn't be FOSS or open source imo. It's fine for studying the code, but it's not any better than "source available" software, such as UE4. And if do study the code, you'll have the same legal landmines to deal with as when studying "source available" code. I'd even say that UE4's license is better, because at least it doesn't cause confusion over whether it's open source.

> No reason to denigrate their work because of that.

I don't think anyone did. They just said it's not open source, which seems like a fair assessment to me. Saying that Windows isn't open source doesn't denigrate Microsoft's work either. Open source doesn't mean good, and proprietary doesn't mean bad. This volume-viewer just isn't open source, regardless of its quality.

> For purposes of this license, commercial purposes is the incorporation of the Allen Institute's software into anything for which you will charge fees or other compensation.

That seems like something best avoided. All kinds of things could be considered compensation, so I think it probably prevents a lot of open source project types. It seems like this may exclude quite a few funding models, for example.

I agree it's not technically proprietary, but that doesn't necessarily make it usable (edit: for open projects, I mean).

Of course it's not binary, there is a gradient. Proprietary doesn't always imply evil. In fact the Linux kernel includes proprietary software in the form of blobs and I don't mind very much. I'm also very glad for example that the computer history museum is publishing ancient software, even if the licenses don't conform with the four freedoms.

The question is how much of a problem it means in the end. How complex is the proprietary piece? How replaceable? How well is it confined? Does it impose any restrictions onto my behaviour or use of the device/service/etc?

The thing with open source is that it's unpaid contributions. People work on your thing, making it better.

Now when you put a source-available licensed software out there and ask for contributors, what you are saying is that you want people to have a major disadvantage compared to you, in addition to all the advantages that you as maintainers already have. I'm not sure whether the allen institute asks for contributors on this or just puts it there to satisfy your curiosity but I wouldn't work on it for free.

The allen institute's main goal is to advance science. It's fine if their stuff is proprietary, they'll do a good job then as well, but if they want to be in the open source community they should accept its rules and not make their own. Ultimately, the act of putting it out there is great and maybe one day they'll change it. We've seen Microsoft undergo the same transition.

Caring about the license is very important. The four freedoms aren't so important because of inertia or dogma but because of pragmatism. They include the very minimum, the very core of what makes open source software open source.

Oh no you stop with that nonsense.

The open source definition https://opensource.org/osd does not allow for discrimination of use for good reason.

You may take no issue with proprietary software but please don't try to weasel "source-readable" software into the wonderful world of free software.