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Comment by nocman | Hacker News Reader

> Nope. Sorry but you don’t get to hijack the term “open source”

The problem with this viewpoint is that the OSI is not the final arbiter of the English language.

Yes, the OSI has an "official definition" of what constitutes "open source" software, but there is a large group of people in the industry that equate the term "open source" with the concept of the source being available, and nothing more. You can shout "wrong, wrong, wrong!" all you want, but I doubt you are going to change many of those people's minds.

The Free Software Foundation has a similar problem with the term "free software".

The people making the definitions are generally passionate about those definitions (for good reasons, mostly, in my estimation). However, I don't think an approach that starts with "Sorry but you don't get to hijack the term" is going to have a net positive effect. If anything, it will probably have a negative effect.

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Um, no. If something can only be used for "non-commercial" uses, then it is not open source software.

The OSI is not the final arbiter of the English language, but this definition is long-settled by the vast majority of people who know about software. For example, many governments (including the US) have definitions of "open source software" written into their laws and regulations, and they all basically agree with the OSI definition.

For example, the US Government's "OMB M-16-21: Federal Source Code Policy" defines "Open Source Software (OSS) as: "Software that can be accessed, used, modified, and shared by anyone. OSS is often distributed under licenses that comply with the definition of “Open Source” provided by the Open Source Initiative (https://opensource.org/osd) and/or that meet the definition of “Free Software” provided by the Free Software Foundation (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)." https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb...

> but this definition is long-settled by the vast majority of people who know about software

We obviously disagree on this point, although "the vast majority of people who know about software" is a fairly vague qualifier.

The fact that many software projects distribute under licenses that comply with the OSI's definition is not particularly relevant to my argument anyway. I'm not talking about people distributing the software, I'm talking about the large number of people I am aware of who think of "open source" strictly as software where the source is available.

The US government examples aren't particularly relevant either. A small number of people make those decisions, and there are legal ramifications for them in how they define things, so I'm not at all surprised that they define the term that way.

As I said elsewhere in the thread, I was not arguing that people who use "open source" as equivalent to "source-available" are right. Mainly I'm arguing that there is still a very large group that see it that way, and that the meaning of the term is far less settled among people who use it than some would like it to be.

I think government examples are relevant. Governments can haul you into court for fraud, for one thing. And they typically try to define things based on widespread understanding - they provide evidence that something is a common understanding.

It's important to have clear terms for important concepts. If you mean source-available (aka "open box"), use that phrase instead. If you mean open source software, call it open source software. Although I don't think it applies in your case, in my experience many of the people who misuse the term "open source software" (OSS) to identify something that is NOT OSS are expressly trying to deceive. Hopefully we can agree that fraud is not acceptable, and then move on to discuss whether or not this is (intentional) fraud.

The term "open system" was not well-defended years ago. It has a definition, but vendors wanted to redefine it into its opposite. Eventually "every vendor with an open mouth had an open system", making the term "open system" mostly useless. It is reasonable to defend clear definitions of important terms, because otherwise communication breaks down.

> I think government examples are relevant. Governments can haul you into court for fraud, for one thing. And they typically try to define things based on widespread understanding.

I never said that the OSI's definition of "open source" wasn't widely held. My argument is that it isn't the only widely-held definition. And I still don't find the government's use of the OSI definition to be particularly relevant - in terms of there being multiple widely-used definitions. It is just an example of one of them.

> in my experience many of the people who misuse the term "open source software" (OSS) to identify something that is NOT OSS are expressly trying to deceive

It has been my experience that most people who use the term "open source" to refer to source-available software are not trying to deceive anyone (although, I am aware of some examples where that has happened). They just haven't dealt with the legal details, and are mostly unaware that a different large group of people attach a lot more meaning to the term than they do.

So I sell code. Source code. But purchasers cannot distribute it as source (only binaries using the source.)

They can obviously modify it, or extend it for their own development.

So its clearly not Open Source (and I don't market it as such.)

I haven't found a generally recognizable term for commercial products shipped as source code (with or without pre-compiled binaries.)

I think that term would be useful, to distinguish something that is not Open Source and also not Binary.

Currently we describe it as "all source, no black boxes or dlls." which is a bit wordy.

I would say though that regardless of what some customers may _understand_ Open Source to be, this is not Open Source. As programmers it behoves us to use correct terminology not hide behind "what we think the customer thinks."

Two phrases I've heard are "source available" and "open box". Both say recipients can see the source code, though they don't guarantee that the recipient can make modifications. Those are the closest I can think of, and both seem accurate.

Now this feels like arguing semantics. Because multiple people are wrong, this makes them right? Sorry, no.

As I said, there’s a reason we have the OSD and it’s to avoid these silly conversations in which people try to argue that because a sufficient number of people think that turquoise is blue, that it is therefore blue.

This is a solved problem, it was solved 15 years ago. Nobody working in this industry has any excuse for being unaware of it. We should not be attempting to re-litigate it on every thread ever.

Too many people trying to pass their work off as open source when it’s not are not acting in good faith and are looking to trade off the goodwill of the phrase “open source” for personal profit. I’m going to complain about this, net positive effect be damned.

A small aside:

  > Because multiple people are wrong, this makes them right?

I am sympathetic to your point of view, but in terms of spoken language, this is actually how it works (to my dismay, sometimes).

If enough people use the term wrong, then that becomes the new definition. c.f. "literally," which can now mean "figuratively." I roll my eyes, but there it is.

That's the descriptivist take, which is useful for studying informal communication, particularly in languages like english where there is no recognized authority that could prescribe how a language is used.

Many languages, and especially most subsets of languages in technical use are prescribed; however.

Enough people using literally when they mean figuratively will eventually make literally mean figuratively in casual conversation. But no amount of people saying squid when they mean octopus will make squid mean octopus within the marine biology community.

I think the interesting part comes when the technical community and the non- (or less-) technical community try to communicate, though.

A marine biologist might reasonably talk about an octopus' tentacles, and understand what other people mean when they talk about those tentacles, even though octopuses actually have "arms" in strict terminology.

Similar friction happens with the word "theory" in science or "proof" in mathematics.

But back to the topic: I think enough people use "open source" in a non-rigorous sense that it's worth leaving room for multiple definitions, versus trying to stamp the non-technical ones out. Marine biologists don't generally go around emphatically saying "they're arms, not tentacles!" (well, maybe some do, but mostly in a good-natured, aware-of-how-silly-it-is sense)

Yeah, but in this case the conversation is on a marine biology site between marine biologists and the distinction between arm and tentacle is fundamentally meaningful to the conversation.

I agree that the distinction is meaningful, but I suppose I disagree that it is safe to assume that everyone on HN has the same outlook towards the issue — we are not all developers, nor are we all involved in Open Source proper, nor do we all have the same background. In other words: we are not all marine biologists from the same school, I don't think.

Sorry to have tortured your metaphor so much (:

You are completely right, but...

I'd suggest that forums like this are good at being specific about terminology, and rigorous about its application.

In other words you, and others, may have used Open Source incorrectly in the past, and may learn from this thread so you don't I the future.

Perhaps your analogy would better apply to Open Source versus Free Software. That's more akin to octopus and squid. Open Source to commercial is more like talking about tentacles when describing a whale.

"Literally" has meant "figuratively" for hundreds of years now. How old does usage have to be before it's no longer eye-roll-worthy?

It's a good question, though I suppose it was mostly rhetorical (:

For me, I feel there is some fuzzy line to draw between "some use" and "over-use". For "literally," it seemed to get really bad maybe 10-15 years ago, where literally everyone was literally dying over literally the smallest things, and it has tapered off a bit since then (just my personal experience).

I feel like my eyes start to roll when it is paired with a lack of self-awareness. Using it as though it were for emphasis, but not actually being emphatic — just tacking it on pointlessly.

Now I'm getting flashbacks to the complaints about inserting "like" everywhere, which somehow has managed to, like, find its niche and persist irregardlessly.

Maybe never?

Richard Dawkins I think made a very good point on Twitter once: If word usage is new and novel and increases expressiveness, we should keep it. If not, we should try and oppose it. Because we want richer ways of expressing ourselves.

This in response to people using "like" too much. As in "Jane was like ... And then I was like ...". "like" doesn't mean "I said" here. So he was supporting the new usage even though he hated it.

Merging "literally" and "figuratively" reduces our expressiveness. Without context ques and maybe not even then if something outlandish actually happens, you can't be sure what was meant. What's the benefit of ambiguity?

Similarly "open source" has a precise meaning especially if you are a programmer. Lots of disciplines have precise meanings for words that might mean something else to the lay person. We don't change maths and physics to suit the layman. Why should we change the meaning of open source? If you don't like the concept as defined, you can invent your own term! Some people have and we have things like "Copy Left".

You could argue that there is some natural evolution of language, but we are also the only species on earth that has literally (not figuratively) changed the planet. So why not mold our languages too? Why should these people who are sticklers for language give in?

> Now this feels like arguing semantics. Because multiple people are wrong, this makes them right? Sorry, no.

I did not say they were right. Effectively I said a lot of people use the term "open source" differently than you do, and that I didn't think the wording you chose to argue your case was going to be effective.

I understand the frustration.

> This is a solved problem, it was solved 15 years ago

I guess that depends on what problem you are referring to. In my experience, the use of the term "open source" to refer strictly to "source available" software is about as common as it ever has been.

> I’m going to complain about this, net positive effect be damned.

Well that's your choice, but in my opinion by doing so in the way you have in this thread, you are working against the goal of persuading people to use the term in the way you want it to be used.

Fair points!

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