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Comment by cxr | Hacker News Reader

Not open source, merely available—or, using the terminology of US copyright laws, it changed status from being an unpublished work to a published work. Mechner's warning from the linked repo:

> As the author and copyright holder of this source code, I personally have no problem with anyone studying it, modifying it, attempting to run it, etc. Please understand that this does NOT constitute a grant of rights of any kind in Prince of Persia, which is an ongoing Ubisoft game franchise. Ubisoft alone has the right to make and distribute Prince of Persia games.

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It seems it is open source by the wording, he just makes it clear, that you can’t distribute it under that name because while he owns the rights to the code, Ubisoft owns the trademark(s). So any distribution would be required to remove the name completely from the game.

But that’s just my total layperson reading.

No, “open source” has a specific definition. Also, he specifically says that you can’t distribute it, only Ubisoft can.

Ironically the specific definition of what open source is is not universally agreed on hence why you have likely seen the acronyms FOSS and FLOSS used explicitly. E.g. if you ask someone of the FSF group what "open source" means and they'll say the obvious meaning is you can look at the source code which is what makes "open source" different than FLOSS (which includes rights to use/modify the source). On the other hand if you ask the open source initiative what "open source" means and they'd likely link you to the OSD which includes most of the things a FSF would consider part of the separate FLOSS definition.

Usually the definition of open source isn't what matters for all things legal though it's about what rights you were assigned and what those let you do as you point out. All the "what does open source mean" debate is just debate on the terminology of being able to view the source.

Is there a school or a correspondence course where people enroll in order to learn how to make up stuff about the FSF when posting online, instead of just familiarizing oneself with what the FSF actually has to say about a given topic?

> if you ask someone of the FSF group what "open source" means and they'll say the obvious meaning is you can look at the source code

Extremely inaccurate. FSF's definition of open source matches the OSI's. Here are some words that are not the product of my imagination—what FSF actually has to say about the relationship between the two: "Among all programs that are open source, only a minuscule fraction are not free".

While I appreciate the questions asking if I've taken a literal course in misunderstanding the topic instead of looking at what the FSF has to say I was actually referencing the article "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software" which fsf.org links to for defining "free software" when writing my comment. From this article a key section I reread before posting:

> The official definition of “open source software” (which is published by the Open Source Initiative and is too long to include here) was derived indirectly from our criteria for free software. It is not the same; it is a little looser in some respects. Nonetheless, their definition agrees with our definition in most cases. [n.b. the OSI definition agrees with that of free software not that OSS is interchangeable with FLOSS - hence the article and its title]

> However, the obvious meaning for the expression “open source software”—and the one most people seem to think it means—is “You can look at the source code.” That criterion is much weaker than the free software definition, much weaker also than the official definition of open source. It includes many programs that are neither free nor open source.

> Since the obvious meaning for “open source” is not the meaning that its advocates intend, the result is that most people misunderstand the term. According to writer Neal Stephenson, “Linux is ‘open source’ software meaning, simply, that anyone can get copies of its source code files.” I don't think he deliberately sought to reject or dispute the official definition. I think he simply applied the conventions of the English language to come up with a meaning for the term. The state of Kansas published a similar definition: “Make use of open-source software (OSS). OSS is software for which the source code is freely and publicly available, though the specific licensing agreements vary as to what one is allowed to do with that code.”

In regards to the material you quoted "Among all programs that are open source, only a minuscule fraction are not free". Yes, that the fsf thinks most OSS also happens to be FLOSS, not that the terms mean the same thing.

> ask someone of the FSF group what "open source" means and they'll say the obvious meaning is you can look at the source code which is what makes "open source" different than FLOSS

Completely wrong. FSF considers the “open source” term to have the meaning as ascribed to it by the OSI. The FSF does not want to use the term itself, precisely because it can lead to misunderstandings.

The definition of “open source” is universally agreed upon to have the OSI-defined meaning, except for some people:

1. Intelligence community people, who have long understood the term “open source” to mean a source of intelligence which is not itself secret.

2. People who, without having ever looked it up, assume it means that the source code is available for reading. These people are simply ignorant, and should be using the term “source available” instead, since it means exactly that.

3. People who want to be able to use the “open source” term for their software to gain goodwill, but don’t want to actually give all of the freedoms it should guarantee. These people are dishonest shills who try to confuse the debate in order to get away with fraudulent labeling.

fsf.org links to this gnu.org article to define what they mean by "free software" https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

From this page:

> fsf.org links to this gnu.org article to define what they mean by "free software" https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

We were discussing the term “open source”, not “free software”.

> From this page:

No, the text you cite is not present on that page. It is present on Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software; <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....>.

> Nonetheless, their definition agrees with our definition in most cases.

In context, they obviously mean “[The OSI’s] definition [of ‘open source’] agrees with [the FSF’s] definition [of “free software’] in most cases”. The FSF does not have an alternative definition of “open source”; they explicitly use the OSI definition.

> the obvious meaning for the expression “open source software”—and the one most people seem to think it means—is “You can look at the source code.”

Contrary to what you seem to be implying, they are arguing against that definition of the term “open source”. This is evident by their phrasing: “That criterion […] includes many programs that are neither free nor open source.”

But you can’t distribute Firefox as Firefox either because of trademarks. Is there a difference?

edit: Ah. Now I get it, I think. You could distribute FF unchanged, which you could not do in this case.

That's not clear at all. There is no reason to believe that Mechner's warning is narrowly referring to the trademark rights, rather than, you know, "rights of any kind".

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