Comment by dwheeler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dwheeler | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

> 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.

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