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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

What do you call software that makes the code available to view, but has a license that forbids actually doing anything with the code other than run it?

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So a proprietary license, and the software is called proprietary software.

CockroachDB created what they call Business Source Licensing intended to leave the code open but prevent what AWS did to ElasticSearch.

The ElasticSearch people backed down on their SSPL license change after only 3 years, and are back to an OSI approved AGPLv3 (in addition to a couple of other non OSI approved licenses).

"In 2021, with the 7.11 release, we moved our Apache 2.0-licensed source code in Elasticsearch and Kibana to be dual licensed under Server Side Public License (SSPL) and the Elastic License, giving users the choice of which license to apply. In September 2024, we are adding the Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved AGPLv3 license as an option alongside SSPL and our Elastic license ensuring our community and customers have open source access to use, modify, redistribute, and collaborate on the code with a clear set of rights of their choice." -- https://www.elastic.co/pricing/faq/licensing

Microsoft used to call it shared source. As long as you don't mislead people by pretending it is open source when it isn't, you can call it anything you want.

You’ll often see “source available” used for that.

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