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Comment by sjs | Hacker News Reader

"under an open source license" is vague. I hope more details emerge soon. If it's a liberal license this could be very interesting.

Without a group leading development the project may languish so ideally a competent group, with a vision, decides to run with webOS.

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They did mention they wanted to control the development of the system to avoid fragmentation, so the license may be more restrictive than Android. Full open-source but cannot sell devices with wildly custom builds without HP's approval seems to be okay with me. As long as they leave a clause for being able to legally share your custom homebrew ROMs, they can put as many restrictions on hardware manufacturers as they like.

> the license may be more restrictive than Android.

Not necessarily. The WebOS name is trademarked and they can just prohibit its use unless the software adheres to a certain quality goal.

Yes, that was true for Meego as well and see where it got them...

Like Red Hat is trademarked, which lead to CentOS.

I think there's no way to adhere to open source definition and restrict that. And it is a good thing

There certainly is. The source code is free and open, but the license to distribute your changes for money is not. There are many licenses like this, especially when copyrights are involved.

Well, obviously you haven't understood what free software is http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

There are other licenses besides the GPL. And you can even make your own license. It's not at all uncommon for open source projects to have a "not for profit" clause attached to their copyright.

I did not point you to the definition of copyleft or the definition of GPL, but to the definition of Free Software. If you read the definition of "Open Source" by OSI, or the DFSG by Debian, they're very similar and clear: the (royalty-free) license includes the right to make derivative work and publish/distribute the modifications.

None of the definitions above include "not for profit" clause as valid. If you have not for profit clause or non commercial or alike, it's NOT free software or "open source". (It's "freeware" or "shareware" or whatever.)

If you make your own license with such a clause, no one will consider it free or "open source." You can call it that way, but you'll just look foolish believe me.

None of the groups mentioned control the definition of "open source." I cannot control what looks foolish to you, but the phrase "open source" is tossed around a lot more casually on this site than you seem to believe.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

I think it would be more productive to promote the licenses whose values line up with your own than trying to police the language. For my part, I will keep pointing out the ridiculousness of saying "$neologism != $foo, because $blog_post says $nelogism = $bar."

Ah, I see, so you can take the trademarked name of any open source project and modify and distribute the software under that name, for profit, and everyone will be okay with it. Otherwise some people will think the vendor looks foolish. I see.

You're paraphrasing the parent, and seem to be confusing Open Source (which is a class of licenses) with trademarks.

You're right, HP still control the trademarks. But for a license to meet the Open Source Definition, there can be no 'non-commercial' restrictions.

So selling 'Foo' (derived from WebOS) is fine.But using the WebOS trademark isn't.

Just like Oracle distribute and sell support for 'Oracle Enterprise Linux' - 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux' is a trademark that belongs to Red Hat.

See CentOS; reduce sarcasm.

But is CentOS called "Red Hat"? No, it's called CentOS. With the comment I made, I was saying you wouldn't be able to release WebOS without HP's permission. Just like you can't release Red Hat without Red Hat's permission, so you fork it and use your own trademark.

That's a totally different matter which has nothing to do with what you were talking about earlier. Trademark and Free Software are two completely different things… (unlike copyright and patent law, where the code itself is directly licensed under copyright law and has to deal with patent law; however there is almost never a trademark license…)

The open source definition and free software definition both prohibit a "not for profit" clause. What is something that you consider to be an "open source project" that has such a clause?

http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

That's a good question. I thought Zed Shaw had licensed lamson under those terms, but I see nothing about that on his github right now.

While I can't find a use in the wild, an example of a license I would consider to be: * open source * prohibit for profit use is: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

You are welcome to say that creative commons is not open source (many people whose opinions I value highly feel that way), but it is commonly described in those terms (or at least it was when it first came out while I was in college).

Also, here is a plug for the world's greatest license (I'm tragically not affiliated with the author): http://davispj.com/2010/02/19/agpl-not-awesome-gpl.html

Open Source is not only about access to the source code, just like Free Software is not only about software price. By using these terms inappropriately, you only create misunderstanding and confusion, so please don't.

CC licenses are not supposed to be used as software licenses anyway.

I'm not trying to push a viewpoint--I'm trying to describe the current use of a phrase. How I feel about licenses does not change the way the phrase "open source" is used here and elsewhere.

I really hope they manage to do that, and avoid the fragmentation that Android experienced, especially with multiple app stores and no centralised over-the-air update mechanism.

  especially with multiple app stores

I hope you're not seriously saying that having multiple app stores is a weakness of some kind.

It is when vendors lock out the public app store in favor of their own (Kindle Fire).

Yes I am.

Huh. Where I come from, people having a choice as to where they can get their apps is a Good Thing©. Care to elaborate why you think it's so bad?

Choice? Some vendors lock you in allowing you to use only their app store.

In a word: fragmentation. Just look at what Amazon have done with the Fire. Separate branch of Android with a separate app store. Same thing happening to webOS would be bad news.

The problem is not having 2 or more app stores, the problem is having 2 or more app stores that are mutually exclusive.

Is there an example of two or more app stores that are not?

Agreed, open source does not mean free, or unencumbered. Symbian went 'open source' too.

It will be interesting to see if webOS's governance is as open as its code. Will its direction and roadmap be as open as its source?

They'll probably rely on whomever adopts it -- which will probably (and hopefully) be Apache Foundation. Once that happens, then the conditions of the licensing can be decided by people who have a better understanding of what is going on. Ideally the community will want a GPL or BSD, but HP will probably want a GPLv3, LGPL or Apache.

> "HP will be an active participant and investor in the project"

"competent" is up for debate, but they're planning on still running the show.

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