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Comment by tudelo | Hacker News Reader

Why? The source is open to the public?

The term “Open Source” has a precise definition, determined by the Open Source Initiative, who invented the term and started promoting it. Nobody used this term in software contexts before they did. They get to define it.

Not sure why this is downvoted. One of the criteria when the term "open source" was decided on by the people who went to form the OSI was that it must not have (much) documented earlier use in order to become eligible for trademark protection.

It was always meant to be a trademark, even if they ended up losing that particular battle. It was deemed to descriptive and generic to be trademarkable, IIRC. The OSI published their criteria anyway, enforced it as much as they could, and really publicized the term over the years. Of course they get to define it.

it's a "look but don't touch" situation. open-source means giving freedom to the users.

there's nothing wrong with source-available, but source-available and open-source are not equivalent.

The source is being shown to the public.

It's not open for them to use.

To argue otherwise is to confuse a window with a door.

The analogy doesn’t really hold. Is a bathroom door at a grocery store called a “window” rather than a “door” if they prohibit you from bringing unpaid groceries through it?

I have no idea what you're going for here. I feel like Programmer Analogies always rely on the reader agreeing with the author... :|

Not all windows are doors. Don’t worry about it, I’m terrible at analogies that make sense to anyone (including programmers, sadly). And if I clarified I’d just be attacked further for not endorsing the OSI party line when it comes to these things. It’s not you, it’s me, etc.

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