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Comment by coffeecat | Hacker News Reader

This article makes the mistake of conflating open source and free software. Open source software may be distributed under licenses that prohibit use by orgs/industries that the developer finds unsavory. But the resulting software is proprietary - not FOSS.

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No, you are mistaken. That is not the commonly accepted definition of open source, see the OSI:

https://opensource.org/osd

> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

It does not. "Open Source" and "Free Software" are pretty much synonymous, with the difference between them being mostly political rather than practical (which doesn't mean that the difference isn't important, it's just not what you think it is). If the software isn't Free, it can't be Open Source. Consult the definition for more details: https://opensource.org/osd

this is a pet peve of mine because we should be able to distinguish between closed source software and open source but non free software. its extremely useful to be able to see/verify what some code does on your computer even without any other rights to that code.

Such software is usually called "source available".

"source available".

> It does not. "Open Source" and "Free Software" are pretty much synonymous

It depends who you ask and who the decision maker is.

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