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Comment by ddevault | Hacker News Reader

>You are categorically incorrect here. Being open for modification is broader than just being extensible.

What does the word "open" have to do with extensibility? Absolutely nothing. You had to phrase this as "open for modification" to make your point, why isn't "open" alone sufficient? My local museum is open from 10 AM to 8 PM daily, at least when COVID-19 is behind us. Does that mean I can bring my own exhibits, or remove the existing ones? No.

"Open" alone is fine. "Open source" has a specific meaning. "Free and open" is deliberately cribbing off of the well-known phrase "free and open source". How about this: why is "open and free" less suitable?

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I added the "for modification" to reference the open/closed principle of object oriented programming. For many programmers the word open has everything to do with extensibility.

"Open and free" sounds like a great suggestion, maybe we could lead with that? Maybe I missed some discussion about that suggestion, I only responded to your remark about the word 'open'.

The typical way to describe this, especially in this sector, would be "royalty-free", right? "Royalty-free shared source game engine" would be about 10x better than either "free and open" or "open and free", which sounds intentionally misleading (even if it's not).

No, because the royalty says something whether you have to pay, but what is meant is that it's not just shared source, you're actually allowed to use modify and extend the source, under certain conditions.

Folks here were previously arguing that when Defold is said to be "free", you're not saying it's capital-F Free, but instead that it's gratis. Now you're saying that the "free" part was referring to something like the FSF's version of free (albeit incompatible!) all along. Pick a position.

No, you started to talk about things being gratis ("royalty-free"), and I'm pointing out that that's not what we're talking about.

Or are you saying that because I'm stating that open is referring to the licensing, that implies the free refers to the gratis part? I guess that's correct, but that's not a point I raised earlier so I'm not inconsistent in my position.

> No, you started to talk about things being gratis

No. That didn't begin with me. This entire discussion is filled with people defending your use of "free" to mean gratis.

> I'm pointing out that that's not what we're talking about

Okay, well now it's not clear what you're trying to communicate with the word "free".

My point was that if you were using the word "free" to mean gratis, then the best thing would be to call it "royalty-free" instead. That's already the accepted nomenclature for creative/industry use, anyway, and it'd be the least confusing choice for this case in particular.

Since I'm not using the word free I'm not trying to communicate anything with it. I think maybe you're confusing me with someone else. You're in the wrong thread at the very least.

> "Open and free" sounds like a great suggestion, maybe we could lead with that? --tinco

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23238506

Jeez, why did I forget I wrote that. You're totally right I apologize. In my defense it wasn't my idea to call it that, but it makes total sense that you'd start a discussion about it, I guess I was just confused.

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