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Comment by dvdkon | Hacker News Reader

Sorry to be pedantic, but since the licence forbids commercial use, the software isn't open source, but rather just source-available.

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thanks for letting me know, I've changed the title of the post to "Making the Kinopio Source Code Available"

You might be interested in fair.io, launching next month. We ran into a similar problem a year ago that ended up stirring up a lot of drama, so we are now promoting the term Fair Source instead of Open Source.

Fair Source: https://fair.io/

Our drama: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36971490

Lots more context: https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/the-historical-case-f...

I wish you well but the name is unintuitive (Why fair? Is there an unfair source?) and the definition¹ is vague.

1. Fair Source is software that is safe for companies to share and developers to use. It's best for a company's core products, not shared infrastructure.

I agree that we need a new term for licenses that are between traditional "source available" where the source code is published, but the license restricts any real usage, and fully open source.

However, I don't like the name "fair source". It implies that open source is somehow unfair, which I don't think is fair.

I see where the name comes from, since it is trying to be more "fair" to the creating company by preventing another company from building a product without putting any work or money into it. But compressing that nuance into the word "fair" is IMO potentially confusing.

Creating a new term to describe this licening model may be a good idea... but it appears that that the linked website has no definition for what the term is supposed to mean yet? Is that something you intend to remedy in the future as a definition is decided upon?

I would also echo other commentators that the name may lead to a belief that you are implying that other software models aren't fair. If that is not your intent, then adding an explanation of it on the website may be a good idea, so that others will know why the name "fair" was chosen and how it is meant to be interpreted in relation to the other licensing models.

It isn't pedantic. It is the truth.

I personally won't touch non-commercial products. Mainly because I never know if what I am doing is commercial. If I'm doing open source work, but not getting paid, but there's a company involved.

Think about improving the keyboard you are using's firmware... Now what happens if that company is grateful and sends you a prototype of the next board to help them out. You are now getting something. Is it commercial?

Why the fuck do I want to think about this. I don't. So I just don't use this type of software, and I encourage others to think of commercial as broadly as possible, when considering using it.

I use all types of licenses including straight up commercial.

But I want to be clear: Their code, their right to license it. I respect that right. And that is why I won't use it.

I strongly agree with this. You just don't have to worry if it's actually free software. You can use vim and emacs at home or at work. You don't need to suddenly pay for a professional license or risk getting into trouble. It's just easier to stick to free (as in freedom) software for this reason. You can do what you want, where you want, no nonsense.

In general, but sometimes commercial software can make life better.

I use the JetBrains IDEs, I have no issue paying for them, I can install them on as many machines as I need etc.

If I make more FOSS, by using a non FOSS tool, it is worth it to me.

I value clarity of licensing above all. The non-commercial, can't use it in military applications or can't use it to save puppies ware is the stuff I really hate.

Do I prefer FOSS, yes, do I try to cut back over to emacs and neovim every so often, yeah. Do I stay where I am for now, so I can be more productive... Yeah.

I have tried to use JetBrains IDEs a few times because I hear they are great and more productive, but I find that I don't know them well enough to be more productive in them... so I think to myself "do I really want to invest the time to learn this tool if it could be made unavailable to me in the future". To be fair to JetBrains, once you buy a license, you always own the license to the last version while you had a subscription, so you are never really cut off from using the old version... however, I also prefer to be able to fork and continue to evolve my tools. So yeah, JetBrains has one of the best proprietary software release models I have ever seen. I just haven't ever been able to justify jumping in when I am already used to the open source alternatives. All the praise to Jetbrains though, they have a great model and they really support a lot of open source development too!

We definitely need a term, more accurate than source-available, that describes software whose usage and improvements can only orbit in non-commercial space.

For non-software creative works, we have Creative Commons NonCommercial licenses.

Yes! We aim to launch https://fair.io/ next month to promote the term Fair Source for this purpose. Early feedback is guardedly positive, e.g., ESR's take was "very clever."

https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/the-historical-case-f...

Why? We all know what "source available" mean and that it's not really open-source.

Somehow you've all established this phrase with the adjective after the noun. I guess it's stuck like that now. "This software is source-available" as in "this chicken is range-free".

AKA the postpositive adjective. I do wish they had gone with Available Source Software for the acronym possibilities.

Because you can

1. Release the source only for the purpose of studying it. Say some scientific software library's source available so you can check the details of the algorithm.

2. Release the source, and allow you to make improvements to it, but not give any further distribution rights.

3. Release the source, and allow non-commercial users to improve the source and distribute those improvements to other non-commercial users.

4. Release under some dual license.

5. Release under certified Open Source licenses.

I would say, most people would only label 1 or 2 as "source available". Over the past few years 3 and 4 are becoming more popular (for whatever reasons - good or bad). So 3 should have a name as well.

there was another excellent one i saw on HN a few months ago - the game "even the ocean" was open sourced to a great extent, somewhere between 3 and 4 on your list. repeating my comment about it:

honestly, i wish the spirit behind that license were easier to formalise and publish - it roughly says "look, this is a game i made and am selling, and i don't want people taking this repo and just cloning the game for free. but we are a community of people making games, and i would love to provide the code and other assets as building blocks that will let other people make their own games more easily."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37626382

3 is absolutely only "source available". For 4, if either of the licenses are open source, then the overall thing is too, but otherwise it's also only "source available".

> We have definitely need a term, more accurate than source-available

I think you mean more marketable. "Source available" is extremely accurate and descriptive. It's not as sexy, though, and that's the real reason people in favor of broadening what "open source" means don't like to use the available alternatives that actually apply. They want the shine of "open source" without having to meet the criteria. This isn't a problem of language. It's a problem of a group motivated by self-interests wanting something that is directly at odds with what their marks want. Not unlike, for example, used car dealers wanting to put their ads in the "for sale by owner" section and being unhappy about being excluded because it means because of all the people who will only see ads by folks who aren't dealers, when that's the whole point. See also: men who can't hit on women in spaces where men aren't allowed.

Not having read the license, for me as a private person this is more than source available no?

Sure, but that is not the same as open source

Hardly pendantic to point out the obvious truth. Headline is a lie

To be fair, I myself was ignorant of the difference between open-source and source-available. This whole time I thought releasing the source code under a license that restricts commercial use was just as open-source as releasing something with an MIT license.

Good to know I suppose.

The Four Freedoms of free software or the Open Source Definition may clear things up, for those who haven't read them. You can sell CDs with Emacs on them!

It is just as open source. If the source is available, you can open it in an editor. There you go: open source.

It's just not Open Source according to the OSI people who believe they own the term. They do not hold a trademark on the term.

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/8367/is-the-t...

The term "open" has been used as a weasel words in the industry before OSI and "open source".

Off the top of my head: "The Open Group", "Open Software Foundation", "X/Open", "Open Look", "OpenStep", "OpenGL", "OpenMax", "OpenType", ...

It's best to use more specific terms like "BSD licensed", "MIT licensed" or "Copyleft".

Or FOSS. "FOSS" is a thing because open source isn't necessarily free due to the conflation with source-available.

here's a better explanation than I could put in a comment:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

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