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Comment by longrod | Hacker News Reader

The author posted this in a recent discussion on GitHub [0]. Thought I'd share it to get more opinions on the matter.

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...

[1] https://open.sentry.io/licensing/

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Yes, OSI is considered the authority on this. Who else? They invented and popularized the term, after all, back in the early dot-com era.

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?

Open source was not invented by the OSI; they claim that, but you can easily find press releases going back to the 80s using the term.

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.

open source didn't want to separate itself for the 4 freedoms, it wanted to separate itself from the toxic and cultish free software culture. to put it more charitably, free software is ideological and utopian whereas open source is pragmatic and realistic. either way these differences are cultural and produce the exact same type of software. in almost every single case an open source piece of software is also free software and a free piece of software is also open source.

OSI being in charge of open source is like that Indian tribe that sold Manhattan to the white man for 28 dollars. They are always cited as being idiots but they were selling another tribe's land and were happy to get paid for it. Likewise people like Eric Raymond were only too happy to facilitate the businessification of free software for a little time in the limelight.

No it's not, that doesn't make any sense. Defining a standard term is nothing like selling land.

Who said anything about defining a standard term?

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.

Free Software's only relationship to Open Source is that you can relicense OSS with the GPL just by kissing it (as long as you comply with any minor strangeness in the OSS license.)

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."

Are you all replying to something the parent said or something? I am not talking about something so simple as the term "open source". In my eyes open source is free software just in a shinier package. (We do seem to be largely in agreement you and I by the way)

AS far as I know, OSI didn’t appropriate anyone’s work. If you’re going to make an accusation like that, you should explain specifically what you mean. what work? Where do they claim ownership? Who had ownership before? How do you know?

An additional question might be, "Do we want to allow a tiny group of people to declare that they, and only they, can pick a generic term like open source and then dictate that their definition is the only definition?" This is not "Kleenex" or "Champagne". This is a generic term.

You could say that about many standards, though. Nobody living was around when they decided what "meter" and "kilogram" mean. And the adjustments to the exact definitions are decided by tiny groups of experts. You don't get to vote on that.

But someone who decided on their own definition of "meter" would be causing confusion, so nobody wants to do that.

Open Source isn't a generic term, it's a weird term. The only reason it seems generic or natural to say is because of the OSI, which makes it more like Kleenex than champagne is like Kleenex.

Coraline Ada Ehmke's stated reason for attempting to join the OSI board was to try to change the definition of open source to permit restrictions on fields of endeavor (specifically, getting her "ethical source" license vetted as open source). The OSI still has emotional if not legal authority over the definition, even among people who aren't satisfied with that definition.

> if not legal authority

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...

you answered your own question -- OSI activity exists exactly to publicize LICENSE and reduce confusion.

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