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Comment by zeeg | Hacker News Reader

We have updated the language on our blog post to the more commonly accepted “open-source” terminology.

I’d encourage everyone who cares about OSS to participate and consider the changes happening in the broader technology sector. Sustainability is more important now than ever in the ecosystem, and we need to evolve our thinking and tolerance. We need to look deeply at the goals of open source and how we can continue to achieve them, and that isn’t going to be arguing about what once was.

Many of the Sentry folks who have chimed in here (including myself) are not here because they work for Sentry, but because they have contributed to open source for the better part of their careers, and many of us in very significant ways (certainly with software you’ve used). We care about improving and protecting the ecosystem. It does no one any good when this community is hostile towards the folks trying to help.

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Listen, you can (and should!) use whatever license you feel works best for your business.

But the trickery around calling the BSL "Open Source" (now "open-source") in the blog post is a very bad look.

The BSL license - in your own repos [0] - has this text:

> The Business Source License (this document, or the "License") is not an Open Source license.

The "change date" is 2026-06-31 and the BSL allows one, at that time, to re-license under a real open source license.

What you're doing amounts to a pre-announcement of open sourcing something 3 years from now. To say it's "now open-source" as the blog post currently claims is quite misleading.

[0] https://github.com/codecov/codecov-api/blob/main/LICENSE#L25

Perhaps the real trickery is the OSI's shady lawyer led campaign after they were denied the trademark on open-source(tm)

https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...

And after they had admitted that:

> While there is agreement on the broad term "open source" as meaning approximately what is captured in the Open Source Definition the term has, ironically, now become so popular that it has lost some of its precision.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060411080543/http://www.openso...

To pressure developers that believe in "open-source" as in the opposite of "closed-source", to also accept their entire anti-developer property "Free Software" ideology.

> We have updated the language on our blog post to the more commonly accepted “open-source” terminology.

What are you talking about? That doesn't fix anything. It'd have been closer to the truth (and physically easier) to update it to say, "Codecov is not Open Source".

"Open Source" and "open-source"[1] are not two different things. You're just rearranging the deck chairs. Using the latter form doesn't soften the transgression.

In an earlier comment[2], you insisted "Our goal is not to argue about proper nouns". Yet... here you are. Why?

Just fix your mistake.

1. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software>

2. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36973452>

Open Source, as a proper noun, is generally considered associated with the OSD from OSI. We are trying to clarify that what we’re representing is not that definition, but are representing what we feel is the spirit of open source software.

I fear this is an instance of that old Upton Sinclair/H. L. Mencken quip—never be so foolish as to waste your breath believing that you can get a man to understand something which his salary requires him not to understand.

Engage with the argument you are being confronted with.

There is no difference between "Open Source" and "open-source". The former is generally associated with the OSD, and the latter is generally associated with people who insist on hyphenating* things—but are referring to the same thing; there is no "open-source" definition that is more relaxed than the "Open Source" definition. You are lying if you want to pretend that there is a widely recognized difference. There isn't.

The problem never was that you're using the Business Software License. The problem is that you are _lying_.

So stop lying.

It's that easy.

* EDIT: And removing the hyphen[1] doesn't fix anything. You have been through no fewer than four different variations of the title at this point[2][3][4]. The hyphen is not the problem. The problem is that you are lying. Try just not doing that.

1. <https://archive.is/XJz9r>

2. <https://archive.is/aSH9K>

3. Unarchived version that used lowercase "open-source" with a hyphen, cf <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36974314>

4. <https://archive.is/XJz9r>

You can literally make the same argument back to yourself, given _I_ and many others agree with the statement I made. Your opinion is fact but mine is opinion?

We’re not going to agree - that’s fine — but I’m not a liar. I’m simply stating our intent. We will keep pushing sustainable open source forward, and hope others will help.

> Your opinion is fact but mine is opinion?

No. Opinions are opinions, and facts are facts. Mixing them up is a type error.

It is not an "opinion" that if someone were claiming that there is widespread agreement of a distinction between "Open Source" and "open-source" (or "open source") then that is untrue—because that's how facts work: they are either true or they are untrue.

It's my opinion, on the other hand, that you guys are willfully dishonest and just kind of scummy, and so it is also my opinion that neither I nor any company I work at now or in the future should ever do business with you.

There should be a distinction between FOSS and OSS. Nobody is trying to infringe on your FOSS rights. But some may argue the term OSS has changed to not strictly mean FOSS. The term "open source" at face value only implies "source available" until you read the license.

Ask 1,000 developers and I'd bet real money the majority would say projects under BSL and other non-"OSI approved" licenses are "open source." Not FOSS, but OSS.

In my experience most people think of open source as free plus source available. The average user doesn’t care much beyond that, which is supported by people’s willingness to add just about any dep to their software without validating licenses. No one will ever agree on terminology, but for me personally BSL is in the same category as GPL in that it achieves a bunch of the core principles, has less consequence, but also only works for certain types of software (eg sentry not libcurl).

> for me personally BSL is in the same category as GPL

Cool. So use the GPL, then.

Previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36973417>

> No one will ever agree on terminology

K. And "no one" will ever agree that evolution by natural selection is responsible for the origin of species. Dang. What a pickle.

So why did the OSI write this?:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060411080543/http://www.openso...

Why did the OSI apply for a trademark on the term Open-Source?

Why does the OSI continue pay the trademark registration fee to renew the unambiguous term "OSI Approved License" and why don't you adopt that term?

Perhaps because both you and the OSI know that when you focus on the term "OSI Approved Licenses", it's just another word for "free software", and most people that are interested in "open-source" are interested because it's the opposite of "closed-source", not interested because they want to associate with the FSFs anti-developer property ideology.

> So why did the OSI write[... ¶] While there is agreement on the broad term "open source" as meaning approximately what is captured in the Open Source Definition the term has, ironically, now become so popular that it has lost some of its precision.

That passage says two things:

1. "open source" means what OSI says it means

2. there are people like OP who exist

OP does exist. That's a self-evident and indisputable fact. Were you expecting me to argue otherwise?

Acknowledging that it's true, however, is completely different from saying that the definition they're using is widely agreed upon or that there is a difference between "Open Source" and "open source" that is wide accepted. (The first sentence in that passage actually says the opposite...)

> I’d encourage everyone who cares about OSS to participate and consider the changes happening in the broader technology sector. [...] We need to look deeply at the goals of open source and how we can continue to achieve them, and that isn’t going to be arguing about what once was.

This isn't a change to achieve open source goals, this is redefining the goals of open source to suit your business interests. You want to take the positive marketing of open source and use it without taking the same risks, by affording the fundamental open rights, which other actual open source projects take. It's not that folks don't respect your right to protect your business interests via the license, but you simple don't have to use the open source term to do that, attempting to redefine what folks love in the process.

> Come on in. Codecov is now open (source).

Literally made me LOL. Because I know the feeling.

I went with "open, source available" for my business. I like yours, too.

That reeks of <https://lwn.net/Articles/82305/>.

It's not clever. It's not snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. It's just deceptive.

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