"I've decided to become vegetarian. From now on I only eat meat on Wednesdays."
"That's not what vegetarian means!"
BSL is not open source.
"That's not what vegetarian means!"
BSL is not open source.
I think the constructive criticism is useful here, but for all but the most in-the-know this is open source as they see it, and describing it as such is just using terminology in the way that society has decided it should be used.
If you feel that the term "open source" has become meaningless as a result, I'd recommend using the term "free software" instead to mean software that is both source-available and licenced in a way that supports software freedom.
...terms like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software , OTOH, are exactly useful for describing what you seem to want, and are perfectly clear. As opposed to muddying the waters by trying to redefine an existing term.
> I think the constructive criticism is useful here, but for all but the most in-the-know this is open source as they see it, and describing it as such is just using terminology in the way that society has decided it should be used.
Right, which is why everyone in the comments here agrees with that. Are you sure your definition is the one that society is using?
> If you feel that the term "open source" has become meaningless as a result, I'd recommend using the term "free software" instead to mean software that is both source-available and licenced in a way that supports software freedom.
LOL - you think it's fine to redefine Open Source because of how you think most people read the term and "shared source" is confusing, but you think we should call Open Source "free software"? A term that every single non-techie will read as "gratis software"? That's a non-starter if ever I heard one.
To me that indicates a change in the societal meaning, as much as I agree that it is incorrect.
You're right that people would and do mistake "free software" for "gratis", and sure that's something we need to work on. I just think the battle is lost with "open-source" and has been for a number of years now, and I can't fault a company, and specifically a marketing department, for getting on board with the way the term has changed rather than taking a principled stance.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36971490#36973675
This is open source to most of us. I can read the code, use the code, and contribute to the project. I don't care if I can't make a SaaS offering of it.
They, as a business, found it more advantageous to make their product available to the public. There are of course business interests rooted in it, (like ending support for their paid product, or gaining free publicity/more sponsorships) but shooing away acts like these just make going open source all around a worse business choice.
Making an effort only counts as a good thing if they're making an effort to do good things. This isn't that though.
I don't understand? They're not going open source so why is the reaction in this thread making actually going open source a worse choice?
You can't expect a good reaction when you announce that a product is now "Open Source" and then not actually use an Open Source license.
Releasing the source is nice but they shouldn't use deceptive language.
> found it more advantageous to make their product available to the public.
That's fine but they should call it something else.
To complete the metaphor: “I will only eat meat on Wednesdays for the next four years, after which I will be 100% vegetarian.”
As someone who is annoyed anytime proprietary-licensed software tries to capitalize on FOSS terminology, I concede that being immediately source-available with a guarantee of being OSS within a reasonable timeframe is still better than we’re likely to get from the majority of projects.
Change Date:2023-06-29 2027-01-01
Seems like it should really be interpreted to mean the Apache license started applying on June 29, 2023.
I love BSL, it's my license of choice for my projects. However, I fully agree it's not open source and it annoys me when others claim to be open source while using BSL. I specifically have the first question in my faq about being open source where I say it's not open source. I've had feedback that some people just stopped paying attention at that point and others where they found it refreshing it wasn't pretending to be open source.
- Likes to self-host stuff for homelab purposes
- Has business needs for shipping self-hosted services in airgapped and on-prem solutions where SaaS isn't available.
Every piece of BSL licensed software that I run (CockroachDB, Couchbase, MariaDB, Sentry, etc) are all open source to me. I can read the code, I can contribute, and I can track changes being added by others.
Your metaphor doesn't hold up because from an user standpoint this IS opensource. I'm not creative enough to come up with a good metaphor but it'd be something closer to:
"I've created a community book collection that anyone is free to take from. But you aren't allowed to take the books and sell them"
No, but Apache 2.0 is, which is what we revert to after three years. The better analogy would be, "I've decided to become vegetarian, starting in three days." But then actually legally guaranteeing that you'll follow through vs. always pushing it off into the future which is what it sounds like with the vegetarian example, I know I wouldn't believe myself if I said that. :D
[disclosure: I'm Head of Open Source at Sentry, which owns Codecov.]
Just say "We're making our source public, and after three years our legacy code will automatically become open source". Don't claim you're making something open source, but then have all these nasty hidden caveats. It's dishonest.
Also feels like we'd have to take this conversation to a video call or something to make any further progress.
[disclosure: I'm Head of Open Source at Sentry, which owns Codecov.]
All of this is reminds me of the "if people keep misusing your design, then it sucks"[2] story from the other day. If you don't want people to "misuse" [common and obvious adjective] + [common noun] then choose a better term.
* January 1, 2027
There are projects that only release Open Source licensed code in very irregular intervals and they are still Open Source. BSL is rolling Open Source with delay.
- it would require a fork since there is no way Sentry (the project stewards, not the company) is going to review and merge 5 year old code [I'm aware there's already a pseudo-fork but this bullet is to highlight what _contribution_ means in the context of 5 year old code]
- if I'm using Sentry today, and I find a bug or want to submit an improvement that scratches my itch, I donate that work to Sentry the corporation
- if corporate raiders continue to appropriate the term Open Source to mean "whatever marketing says we can get away with claiming" then in dilutes the goodwill from companies who really do use Open Source
I have an special bitterness in my heart for companies that start out with a FOSS license and then rug pull to a non free license. I will never forgive you nor SourceGraph for that betrayal
In practical terms most of Sentry at this point is fully Apache 2 licensed.
> I have an special bitterness in my heart for companies that start out with a FOSS license and then rug pull to a non free license. I will never forgive you […] for that betrayal
BSL is for me personally something I can fully stand behind. I understand others do not and I cannot change that. However I believe we all in the Open Source community need to find better ways to have commercial and Open Source community incentives to align. BSL is the best I personally found so far.
It means we can work in the open, don’t need to do things we would not stand behind to protect the business etc. You can today like 10 years ago do what you want with Sentry what you want.
> I'm aware there's already a pseudo-fork but this bullet is to highlight what _contribution_ means in the context of 5 year old code
The rolling Sentry commits are already ahead of the ancient BSD forks I’m aware of.
.... which means it's not open source.
The "irregular interval" companies general release the source at the same time they deliver a new software version. It's not a fair comparison at all, since you can always get the open source code for the software you're running.
Did you even read the license?
Literally the first line of the "Notice" section:
"The Business Source License (this document, or the "License") is not an Open Source license."
I just don’t understand the criticism of a company transparently acting in its best interest (in what I would consider to be a completely reasonable way).
“Open Source” has a specific meaning. It’d be like saying “…is now free!” with “free” defined as some price I consider to round to zero. It’s clearly misrepresenting the word which has a specific meaning.
For this reason, I think the Business Source License (BSL) (with an Open Source Change License) is less nefarious than the Server Side Public License (SSPL).
I just want them to stop using deceptive language.
> I just don’t understand the criticism of a company transparently acting in its best interest (in what I would consider to be a completely reasonable way).
They are lying in order to benefit from the good will and legitimacy that open source brings.
What you are doing right now is a pretty transparent motte-and-bailey <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy>
Don't do that.
It's open source, except that you can't use it in a competing commercial product. So for 99% of uses, open source.