Why the term "open source" is important
danb.me
danb.me
Personally speaking it irks me a little when different terms are made ownership by someone. OSI is doing great work but is it considered an authority when it comes to defining what open source is? In other words, can open source exist without OSI? I certainly think so.
For example, what does it mean when Sentry says their licensing scheme is not acceptable by OSI [1]? Does it change the meaning of open source?
It's really confusing.
[0] https://github.com/streetwriters/notesnook/discussions/747#d...
Of course, they can't do it alone. The question is whether you should support OSI's efforts or not. Do you want "open source" to have a clear meaning or do you want to drift into meaningless like "agile" or just "open?"
It's the same as any other standard. If everyone stops following the standard then it will fail, but is that really want you want?
But yes, on the popularity bend, you're correct -- the OSI basically was a giant PR campaign, started by Netscape to publicize their going-out-of-business sale as a good thing, actually. Most importantly, they specifically wanted to separate themselves from the FSF project's four freedoms, which they viewed as antithetical to business -- or rather, antithetical to any business who wanted to buy the charred remains of Netscape, like AOL. So they started with Debian's DFSG, and whittled it down until they had something they could sell.
In my opinion, people argue about terminology too much rather than the freedoms and the society we want to build, but that's just the internet, sometimes.
It's about one organization appropriating years of work like they've been the ones doing it all along and corporations being all too happy to accept it as such because it is good for business.
Open Source tried to steal the energy of Free Software and steer it in a business friendly direction, but they didn't steal the term "Open Source" any more than Free Software stole the term "Free" from "free beer." These are just terms of art, certifications by two very established and influential certification bodies, and wittering on about whether somebody said they were "going to open the source and let people have a look at it" in 1973 is as irrelevant as the fact that plastic polymers are organic but not "Organic."
But someone who decided on their own definition of "meter" would be causing confusion, so nobody wants to do that.
According to this press release they did not win the trademark for ‘Open Source’, only ‘OSI Certified’ (which would be a wholly better definition for people to use, however, it’s a term that might need explanation or further context when used, so it’s not often said).
https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
(There's a side argument of whether "Champagne" should be a protected term. The physical region has clear boundaries, but that doesn't mean that the beverage should be defined in terms of the region. If I am opening a combination diner/antique shop, I may advertise it as "Hamburgers and China", even if I am neither near Hamburg nor China. I do not need to follow the lead on calling champagne "sparkling wine" and name my ill-conceived business venture "Ground Beef Patties and Exquisite Ceramics".)
A particular kind, yes. The OSI definition? I'd want to see something that showed objectively that this is what people think. I saw some projects I support come under fire for not being open source recently- I've been. a user and supporter of FOSS software for a long time. I didn't realize that making exclusions on who can use your software wasn't open source. If a developer doesn't want their code used in a weapons system, it doesn't meet the OSI definition.
I know it now, but then I think that leaves the software to use a term that's much less accurate. I don't think that happens because they have a profit motive and want to exploit the term open source. In fact I've seen licenses that are essentially open source except they try to stop people from making a bunch of money off of community work, including those currently controlling the project.
> I didn't realize that making exclusions on who can use your software wasn't open source.
Really? How? Isn't that incredibly obvious? If my license says "this software can only be used by Jane Doe from Boston", is it FLOSS? Or even "only by people who pay me $2000 every month for using it"? After all, it's just a (large) exclusion on who can use my software.
If a license tries to stop people from making money, it's clearly not "essentially open source" in its very nature. In its essence, "open source" means "everyone can use it, and no limitations can be placed other than this particular set of acceptable restrictions". How can you expect that placing additional arbitrary restrictions still gives you the right to call your thing "open source"?
Your assertion that everyone who doesn't agree with you is a liar is problematic. I recommend really thinking about it and the ramifications. You are saying millions of people all agree with you or they are dishonest. Or possibly confused and they will agree with you when the confusion is cleared (unless they are dishonest). I can say I am not convinced and I'm not a liar or a person who is defensive and embarrassed by my not knowing this previously.
I was not aware of this provision that the software must be available for any use until this year (I've been using/involved with FOSS software for about 22 years - unfortunately a good number of years less than half my life) and it didn't occur to me as being necessary because to me saying something like, "this is open source except for military use" or "this is open source for non-profits" seems just as reasonable as "you can't modify this code and distribute binaries unless you distribute that new code". For people willing to agree to the terms, it is open. For the people unwilling to agree it is not.
I've never been really involved on the legal end of it all. In business contexts I used whatever was approved and the personal projects I've done, I've always used an MIT license because it was the easiest for me to understand.
I found out about this on github when I saw some issues opened on a project, because it was described as open source but the license didn't fit the OSI description. I found it to be interesting but also disappointing because it seems to be an issue of "comply or be attacked". There were links about why the vitriol was justified, but I read through it all and wasn't persuaded that the anger directed at the project owner was appropriate.
A license by its very nature restricts things. It's just a matter of which things and I think there is room in this space to be a good actor and have a different opinion. As the GPL says, "To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions..."
I don't see a long chain from "I don't want anyone to keep you from reading and modifying this code" to "I don't want someone to use this code to create an environment that takes away the human rights necessary to read and modify this code".
The fallback position I've seen is the one repeated here - "Everyone already knows and agrees with this except bad actors." and I just doubt that's true. Too many people make software and it's too large a group for me to take at face value any claims regarding a majority understanding. I'd want to see something objective that shows the work was done to know this rather than it just being an opinion or reflective of anecdotal evidence.
I did not. I just fail to see how it isn't obvious to anyone who gives two thoughts about how the term "open source" is being used, so I wanted you to explain it.
> For people willing to agree to the terms, it is open. For the people unwilling to agree it is not.
I'm sorry, but this doesn't make any logical sense. You can easily extend that to "for a person willing to buy the copyright from me, it's open; for a person unwilling or too late to buy it is not". How many people can you exclude until such a license stops being "open" in your book? This approach dilutes the meaning of the term so much that it completely ceases to be useful. I honestly can't understand how does that make any sense to you.
> Your assertion that everyone who doesn't agree with you is a liar is problematic.
That's not my assertion. If I saw entire communities using the term in conflicting ways, we would be having a completely different discussion. That's not the case though, the flamewars were always being fought in the exact opposite direction by people who perceived copyleft as "not open enough" (and even they usually didn't contest the meaning of the term, just argued about their own stance). In my experience, "Open Source" has always meant what OSI has defined, to the point that I don't even see it as being actually defined by OSI, but rather that OSI has written down the meaning that was already agreed on in practice (it's heavily based on DFSG after all). It wasn't until relatively recently that some projects started to claim being "open source" despite of not actually matching the definition. The benefit for them from doing so is obvious, and when they argue for the definition to become broader this is clearly a classic conflict of interest. I can't agree to that, because this dilutes the meaning of almost two decades of my work. Go use another term, this one's already taken.
> A license by its very nature restricts things.
That's absolutely not true. In many jurisdictions, a license is pretty much the only tool you can use to unrestrict things, the only alternative usually being a Public Domain dedication (which isn't even available at all in some parts of the world). By default, all your rights are reserved and nobody can use your software unless you give them an (explicit or implicit) license. Open Source licenses are meant to unrestrict your code as much as possible, only allowing some specific kinds of restrictions that are meant to protect the unrestricted nature of your code and to give you attribution for your work. That's it, that's the universally agreed meaning that was in use for a very long time now. You can't get to restrict arbitrary things on top of that and still call it open. Sure, you can argue that your particular ideas for restrictions are also meant to protect people's rights, but to make it actually accepted as "Open Source" you would have to convince the community (not just OSI!) to reach consensus that this can, in fact, still be called Open Source. And that's clearly not what's happening, so if you continue to use this term in the wrong way, I can't see it as anything else than being malicious.
Lots of people think that "public domain" means something other than what it does mean. (Coincidentally, the most common misunderstanding arises from an assumption that it means something very similar to if not exactly the same as what you thought of "open source".) And yet, its actual definition remains in effect.
I have no problem with talking about Tesla cars; nobody argues that we should be talking about Nikolai Tesla's personal car, or a car down the street that somebody spraypainted the word "Tesla" on.
Whenever this discussion is rolled out again, it's useful to address a few key points. First, open source is defined by the open source definition. This is not contingent on the OSI receiving a trademark for the term. The common usage of the term is defined by the OSD, and much in the same way that selling "cakes" and fulfilling orders with used car tires is dishonest, so too is pushing non-free software under the brand of open source.
And note that open source is defined by the OSD -- not by the OSI. Should the OSI attempt to re-define "open source" without careful consultation with the community or in service of a conflict of interest, the community will withdraw its support for the new definition.
Painting the term as having always been loosely defined is historical revisionism. What we have always seen, and what we are seeing now, is a minority view that seeks to forward an unorthodox definition of open source in the service of their private financial interests. I am not prepared to accept a novel interpretation of open source because you feel that it would be more profitable for your business if I did.
The open source brand has been wildly successful and it's a lucrative target for bad actors to exploit with non-conformant software licenses. Don't be a sucker. These interpretations are not in your best interest.
Subdividing "source available" as implied but not well defined in this article, into its own group does not substantially help me. When someone describes a useful "open source" thing to me, one of my first questions is which license it is under, and that would be the same whether someone said "source available" or "open source".
Perhaps there's something more behind "punch in the gut", but I don't really know what that is. There's a link to a tweet about these projects being boosted under the open source term, but the tweet has little engagement: 20 project logos, 43 likes. Did it actually reach beyond direct customers? Did the term open source have any impact at all here?
often depends who you ask, istr stallmans take on "open source" is that the term came into existence explicitly to dilute the free software movement and make space for evil companies to do evil things. if you were to buy this then it may continue from that logic that everything covered in the article is well labelled open source.
i don't really condone stallmans biased and divisive position on this, but it is exemplary of the kind of conversation we're wading into with opinions about what it means historically.
e.g. https://www.cmpod.net/all-transcripts/history-open-source-fr... under "A Surreal Situation"
It did. That has nothing to do with whether Open Source Software refers to software that uses an OSI approved license. It's the people trying to cloud a technical term with a dictionary meaning in order to be parasitic on FOSS without being FOSS who are being divisive, not people using the terms normally. Stallman isn't doing that.
> if you were to buy this then it may continue from that logic that everything covered in the article is well labelled open source.
I mean, this is just nonsense. Stallman says Open Source is bad, therefore everything bad is Open Source?
this is not the case with open source. for close to 2 decades it was very obvious what open source meant and there was no confusion about it. it wasn't until the source available movement started to take off and they started to cash in on open source's reputation and identity for the sake of promoting themselves and cheapening the meaning that it became confusing.
the problem is that since this is a cultural movement and not a piece of intellectual property like a trademark there is no way to prevent people from contorting open source into whatever best suits their self serving interests.
I think it’s hyperbolic of you to suggest that when people use “open source” to mean “source that is open”, that implies they’re being selfish or contorting anything. You’re failing to acknowledge the very real problem that “open source” taken literally doesn’t mean what some people want it to mean.
If I start calling my OS "Windows" people might get upset even though windows predate MS by millennia.
Uhm, no? That's the opposite of what the article actually says. Public Domain code is Open Source without any doubt, period. There is however a set of acceptable limitations that you can place on your code and still call it Open Source - mostly related to attribution or keeping derived works under the same terms. If you place other limitations on what others are allowed to do with your code once acquired, it's not Open Source regardless of whether they can see the source code or not. Which makes perfect sense to me - I can easily see the source code of Windows 2000, but that doesn't make it open.
1. Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
“Rationale: By constraining the license to require free redistribution, we eliminate the temptation for licensors to throw away many long-term gains to make short-term gains. If we didn't do this, there would be lots of pressure for cooperators to defect.” https://opensource.org/osd-annotated
Public domain has no such restriction. Public domain always allows people to do literally anything they want, sell & redistribute the public domain code in any form they choose, make it proprietary, redistribute the code under any other license at all, and generally do anything they want for any reason including throwing away long-term gains for short-term gains.
You even quoted it yourself: "The license shall not restrict". Public Domain code does not restrict these things (nor anything else), therefore it's perfectly compatible with Open Source licenses and Public Domain code can obviously be considered Open Source [EDIT: at least assuming that it's actually effectively Public Domain, which can be hard to determine - see commoner's reply].
Sure, you can also take some Public Domain code and stamp a non-free license on it (just like you can do with code under some [but not all] of Open Source licenses, like MIT) - which I guess may be what caused your confusion?
> Public Domain software may come with the rights delivered by those “four freedoms”, but you can’t be sure. It will depend where the software was written, where you are located, who the author is and where the people you are sharing the software with are located. A deployer or developer will need to at very least ask for advice before proceeding, and most likely will need to secure the services of a legal professional with experience in copyright law in each affected country. Even asking the author is unlikely to be conclusive. That’s why public domain software may be free software but is not certain to be.
> A solution would be to create a form of words to be used by the author to dedicate something to the public domain. It could simply disclaim ownership for the jurisdictions where that is possible, and then grant a copyright license that has the same practical effect as a public domain dedication for jurisdictions where ownership of copyright can never be disclaimed. Such a formulation has been published by the Creative Commons. They call it “CC0” and it is widely used and well respected.
https://opensource.org/node/878
However, you are right that the Open Source Definition's "Free Redistribution" clause doesn't require an open source license to be a copyleft license. The "long-term gains" rationale is an explanation for the motivation of the "Free Redistribution" clause, and is not a restriction on what open source licenses can say.
There are many open source licenses that allow "people to do literally anything they want, sell & redistribute [] code in any form they choose, make it proprietary, redistribute the code under any other license at all, and generally do anything they want for any reason including throwing away long-term gains for short-term gains", including 0BSD and MIT-0:
https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
> Edit: You replied just before I edited my comment to mention 0BSD and MIT-0. I agree that these are good alternatives to CC0.
[0] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fe...
How so? Who’s confused about what public domain means? Are you thinking of specific cases or precedent?
Assigning something to the public domain is equivalent to waiving all copyrights and license restrictions. Unlike OSI’s definition of open source, public domain comes with no agenda and no protections of any kind for the author, and no restrictions of any kind for the consumer/redistributor.
I don’t know if you’re misinterpreting my opinion on open source, but I’m in favor of Open Source restricitions, I happen to agree with OSI’s reasoning. I’m just also in favor of open language, where words are allowed to have multiple reasonable meanings, where it’s okay and a good thing if it takes time to explain subtle points, and where we don’t expect people to have to know that innocent sounding words are somebody’s slogan, and also know the complete history and special meanings behind the slogan before using it.
Laws.
You see, what various countries regard as Public Domain differs a lot. In Germany, for example, there's no way for someone to dedicate something to Public Domain at all. You simply can't waive your copyrights, period. Public Domain exists there, but it only consists of works which had their copyright expired or which have never had any copyrights assigned. If all you say is "I waive my copyright and dedicate this to Public Domain", then such declaration is simply invalid in Germany and may have no legal effect. This is why people use licenses such as CC0 to effectively emulate the effect of dedicating works to Public Domain even where there's no way provided by the law to do it.
There are more subtle effects involved when it comes to considering Public Domain status even between countries that happen to allow dedicating your works to it. It's very complicated. I still stand with all my comments about Public Domain being perfectly valid Open Source, but it has to be added that this assumes a CC0-like license (and patent grant if necessary) to make Public Domain dedication actually valid and non-ambiguous worldwide.
See also: https://opensource.org/faq#public-domain
This is misleading in a way that contributes to misunderstanding IMO. Copyleft means specifically preserving the same license when redistributing. OSI’s license might not be copyleft per se, but it does in fact limit what the redistribution license can do, and requires the source to stay “open”. Public domain does not require the redistribution license to remain open. OSI is very clear about this, contradicting @seba_dos1’s claim that public domain is OSI open source compatible. https://opensource.org/faq#permissive
"OSI's license"? Which one? There's no requirement for the license to require the source to "stay open" for it to be called Open Source, and you have already linked to the page that confirms that.
> Public domain does not require the redistribution license to remain open.
Neither do some Open Source licenses, like MIT, which I already mentioned above. Which is even clearly stated by the page you just linked:
> Most copyleft licenses are Open Source, but not all Open Source licenses are copyleft. When an Open Source license is not copyleft, that means software released under that license can be used as part of programs distributed under other licenses, including proprietary (non-open-source) licenses. For example, the BSD license is a non-copyleft Open Source license. Such licenses are usually called either "non-copyleft" or "permissive" open source licenses
> OSI is very clear about this
It sure is, I don't know why you choose to not read what they write. Heck, you've even got links to 0BSD and MIT-0 licenses earlier, which are recognized as Open Source licenses and which you can both read in their entirety in 3 minutes and that would be enough for you to realize that you're wrong.
Please stop spreading misinformation.
It is not a condition of OSI approval for a license to require that downstream projects be reciprocally open source. You can absolutely take MIT licensed code and put it in Microsoft Windows or some closed source app, for example.
If you're unclear or have questions about something, then it's fine to say so and ask questions in the appropriate forum. What you're doing, though—which involves saying something and then waiting for someone to challenge or correct you—is harmful and contributes to even more outlandish and untrue beliefs about open source than what already exist.
To reiterate: the clauses you're quoting do not mean what you are interpreting them to mean, and claiming otherwise, especially so confidently, is actively harmful.
The OSI license is a limitation on redistribution, and in case you missed it, it clearly states “the license shall not require a royalty or other fee”. That clause is fundamentally incompatible with Public Domain. The purpose of that clause was explained in the “rationale” statement; it’s an attempt to preserve and protect the open-sourceness of open source. There is no such protection with public domain. This is exactly what @ssddandrown was talking about, it’s the whole point of the article.
> You even quoted it yourself: "The license shall not restrict".
I did quote it, I think you got confused about which license this is talking about. It’s referring to what the redistributed code’s new license is allowed to do. Public domain code can legally be redistributed under a license that does restrict what others can do with it. OSI Open Source code does not permit redistribution with a restrictive license.
There's no "the OSI license". There's a set of requirements OSI defined to classify software licenses as either Open Source or not.
> it clearly states “the license shall not require a royalty or other fee”
Exactly. To be considered Open Source, the license can not require any fee (among other things). Public Domain code (let's assume CC0 here to avoid any confusion on its legal status) does not require any fee, therefore it can be considered Open Source.
> it’s an attempt to preserve and protect the open-sourceness of open source
Yes, that's why the licenses that require the code to stay free are permitted to be called Open Source. It's very clearly not a requirement.
> OSI Open Source code does not permit redistribution with a restrictive license.
Of course it does. Please read the OSI guidelines once again, from the beginning till the end. Throw away your previously held misconceptions.
> let's assume CC0 here to avoid any confusion on its legal status) does not require any fee, therefore it can be considered Open Source.
Poor choice. CC0 is not considered open source by OSI. https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero
> Public domain allows the redistributor to charge a fee.
So do Open Source licenses. You can sell software on GPL, MIT etc. with absolutely no issues. You just need to allow others to redistribute it further without any additional fees (but if they wish, they can charge a fee too).
See: https://opensource.org/faq#selling
It's in fact one of the requirements for it to stay Open Source. You are literally guaranteed to have a right to charge a fee with Open Source software. Some people would like to change that and to consider licenses that add additional restrictions like disallowing commercial usage as Open Source too, which is why the article we're commenting under has been written in the first place.
At this point, the counter problem is growing: the legitimate alternative meanings of the term “open source” are getting more used as time goes, not less, and speaking personally I don’t think maintenance or blog posts is going to fix it. Creative Commons licenses got pretty good at this by adding more words to each variant of their license titles. What about that? There’s an inherent problem with hoping to keep a term as short and generic as “open source”, when the issues you care about are separate from whether you’re allowed to look at the source.
BTW, I don’t think you can reasonably argue that “attribution non-commercial share-alike” is not more specific and not a better summary of the license conditions than the generic term “open source”. Trademark is a good point, however I think you’re wrong to say that better license titles is not part of why CC licenses are less confusing to a broad range of people.
I’m only offering ideas on how to solve an existing problem of unclear words and unreasonable expectations, not asking anyone to do anything. We can continue to use “open source”, and suffer the consequences and continue to complain. I think the problem the author called out will continue to get worse. Plus, as pointed out elsewhere in this thread, OSI co-opted this term from others who had already been using it differently before them.
It would be way better if the term was clearly a name, rather than something that tries to gate-keep the meaning of general words. That would make it so you assume you need to look it up, and not assume what it means. It would be better if “open source” didn’t have other, easier to assume and understand meanings that came both before and after OSI’s ideas. If we don’t want to use a name, then it would be better if the phrase used a word or two to capture the ideas in OSI’s version. Using “open source” to mean something with restriction is a desire to have your cake and eat it too. This is in essence a marketing slogan that wants to rest multiple license limitations on the positive-sounding word “open”, without having to admit there are parts of the license that limit some kinds of openness and freedom in certain ways (under the possibly true belief that such limitations are the maximum balance of openness for everyone). Both term “open source” and “free software” suffer from this problem, hoping to establish a slogan out of two words that most clearly imply a meaning that is unfortunately antithetical to the movement. This is just a choice, and we could choose to be clear, or choose to fight the tide.
Perhaps it is my long experience with OSS, but to me "open" expresses freedom to use and modify not just to peruse. Some source available licenses are in more of a gray area here. But I've also seen companies claim that they are open source just because their code is on GitHub, even though their license doesn't allow you to do anything with that source code.
> all lawmakers and law enforcement, all journalism, all business people, and the general public.
Most of these people have no idea what source code is, so open source means nothing to them, unless someone explains it to them.
> It would be way better if the term was clearly a name, rather than something that tries to gate-keep the meaning of general words
I don't disagree with you, but the term "open source" is already widely used (moreso I think than "free software" which IMO is even worse given the ambiguity of the word free in English). And I would argue that it is a term of art in the software industry. It isn't the only case where general words are used for specific meanings in our industry, by far. Coming up with a new term would require a lot of effort to teach everyone already familiar with open source a new term, rewriting a lot of literature about OSS, and probably some rebranding. And then, even if the new term does catch on, as others have mentioned, companies will probably still use the new term to incorrectly refer to things that don't meet the definition, for the same reasons they do now.
Would it be better to have a more specific name, maybe something that could be trademarked? Probably. Is it worth changing the term at this point? Probably not.
But there is no consensus on what is "open source". Is AGPL open source? Despite the FSF and OSI approving AGPL, many would argue that it is a EULA.
The inevitable result is the erosion of the generic branding "open source" and the rise of specific licenses. "MIT" or "Apache" or "BSD" evoke one set of reactions, while "GPL" or "MPL" evoke another.
It's not "consensus" in the sense of "unanimity" (is anything ever, when it comes to widely used terms?) but there's a "consensus" in the sense of widespread agreement to use the OSI's definition.
> Is AGPL open source?
Yes. Why wouldn't it be? It meets all the standard requirements (https://opensource.org/osd) and the OSI has approved it.
> If I were to run a modified AGPL'd SSH server on my own hardware, the question of whether I'm violating the AGPL depends on whether I'm allowing others to access it remotely. If the AGPL can be violated without copyright infringement, it's clearly in a different legal category than the GPL.
That "[AGPL] meets all the standard requirements" and "OSI has approved it" is really an indictment of OSI judgment, not a sound argument with basis in copyright law.
I agree with the post and also other posters here that in that the post skips over the free/open software debate which is also quite relevant.
What you are talking about is source available software.
My irritation aside, though, I can't decide whether the author is passively ignorant of the rest of the iceberg, or actively chooses to ignore it.
But the definition itself is fluid, contextual, and subject to change over time.
Both open source and free software are defined as software that allows you to:
* use the software for any purpose
* examine the source
* distribute the software under the same license terms as you received it
* modify the software in any way
* distribute the software in modified form under the same license terms as you received the original
Stallman's quibble with "open source" is that open source messaging focuses on the business benefits of this kind of software rather than the inherent virtues of free software (and the inherent vices of non-free software). Note also that even to Stallman and the FSF, even BSD- or MIT-licensed works are "free software"; software licenses that forbid redistribution under a different license are called copyleft licenses under the FSF.
Although I’m no fanatical Stallmanite (Stallmanist? :), I do see the categorical distinctions clear as day; can’t understand why Open Source people play the willful ignorance card.
Free Software is good for people primarily, while Open Source is good for corporations primarily.
If people ignore FS and promote OS, what does that tell us about their intentions?
Most end users are just happy there’s a ton of free, quality code to run and study. Admittedly that’s only the case because of the FSF, but I think they should just accept that “open source” is a perfectly good term to describe software that is free and you can download the source.
Everything else is licensing nuances e.g, politics
Despite their mission having been an overwhelming success.
The idea of Free Software, at its most extreme, exists as a useful endpoint of an "Overton Window" for software. Which is to say, all software benefits from its existence even if they don't e.g. sign on to the GPL. You're forced to consider it as a possibility.
Without it, we'd probably think of "Open Source" as the most "open" software can be -- which, as OP proves, is quite wrong and nebulous.
For me, the perfect concrete case of this was here reading about youtube-dl being removed for Github. It became clear to me that a not-insignificant number of professionals in this space absolutely equated "deleted from Github" as "literally gone forever such that no one could have it again."
People will forget about the idea of free software and taking a copy of the code home with you as an important idea to be preserved, unless the FSF et al remain.
Richard Stallman and GPL discussions certainly do mention ethics as part of the considerations. I agree that no person is completely disjoint from ethical considerations, with intelligence. But as this thread explores, there are multiple points of view, unclear and untested aspects legally within multiple legal jurisdictions.
But you make a large leap when you say "they should not mention" .. It is a dramatic statement, not a logical one, it is more in common with persuasive, political speech than logic there.
As noted by others, a useful simplification is to focus on one particular LICENSE at a time. Is this license ... x y z. As Google did long ago and as Github started to do and as the OSI does and as FSF does... like that.. not debate on the entire concept, but instead focus on the implementation, as software does.
I was not talking about free software as in the adjective free applied to software. But free software as in the term from the free software movement where its members call code that follows their ideals of what is ethical free software.
>It is a dramatic statement, not a logical one
The logical reason is that free software is less inclusive because it considers most SWE unethical for working on proprietary software. If the term open source works just as well and is more inclusive it should be used.
Perhaps this is because their goal is to promote the GNU licenses, not to be objective about it.
OSI was created in part in reaction to ambiguity and confusion around "free software."
Maybe I could add a "Further Reading" section at the end though with links to such topics.