Hacker News Reader

Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

To extend the metaphor though... only eating meat on Wednesdays is much better than eating it every day, and releasing the source and accepting contributions, even if under a licence not recognised as meeting the full open-source standards, is still much of the value.

View on HN

Sure it's better, but if you do that and then call yourself a vegetarian people are still going to call you a liar. Nobody's objecting to the change, just the dishonesty.

Colloquially, almost all of the perceived value of "open source" code is that the source is available. Terms like "shared source" are unclear and not useful.

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.

> Colloquially, almost all of the perceived value of "open source" code is that the source is available. Terms like "shared source" are unclear and not useful.

...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.

In my experience, most engineers have barely any understanding of the licencing side of open-source, but all of them use GitHub for "open-source".

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.

I just responded with the same thing but think you said it in a better way!

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.

Completely agree, and if BSL allows the project to continue making enough money to sustain itself instead of being turned completely over to the community and risk becoming abandoned, then I’m all for it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com