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Comment by emacsen | Hacker News Reader

I was so so excited to read this, then I saw the headline is deceptive. It's not Open Source; it uses a Creative Common "Non-Commercial" license.

CC licenses are not meant for software. They explicitly say so on their FAQ: https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm...

And non-commercial licenses are not Open Source, period. This has been well established since the 1990s, both by the FSF and the OSI.

It's such a promising piece of software, but deceptive advertising is a bad way to start off a relationship of any sort.

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Ok, we've replaced open-source with source-available in the title for now, so hopefully the discussion can get back on topic.

I would like to add that this is probably not deceptive advertising. At least not intentional deceptive as many people including me didn't know that CC licenses are not meant for software and is not considered open source. I don't know if it is common misunderstanding or not but I think there is strong case to say that some people intuitively would think so.

Yes, that's right. This was definitely not intentional and we are very open to changing it to something more appropriate!

I think the license choice is great. It allows noncommercial use, modification, and redistribution. It’s not “open source” according to the champions of the term (since it violates the use-for-any-purpose requirement) but I’m a huge fan of this license and license several of my projects CC-NC-BY where AGPL would be too heavy-handed.

I think your choice is very appropriate.

And it is open source.

Probably not OSI-open source or FSF-open source but it is open source, period.

"It's not recognized as Open Source by the Open Source body, and doesn't meet the criteria of Free/Open Source Software, but is Open Source" is a bit like saying "I used GMO and petroleum based pesticides, but my produce is all organic."

But here the source is open!

Why should we restrict the meaning of Opel Source, a societal mouvement since decades, to a list of criteria that FSF or OSI decided?

Open source is not a trade mark by FSF or OSI.

OP did not say it is free/libre software, but just open source, which it is.

We don't need "source available", just open source is correct.

PS: can you define the open source body in your previous comment?

Why should words like "organic" in relation to food mean without pesticides? I mean all carbon and water based life forms are organic, right?

I can define Open Source easily, using the OSI definition.

There is not a trademark for Open Source because they failed to secure the trademark, but we have decades of use for the term meaning something specific.

BSD or MIT license would be nice.

AGPL would be better

Amazon and other cloud providers avoid AGPL, so I think it's closer to the intentions of the OP.

It might not be, but I can't understand how someone who has written such advanced software, and includes a monetization plan, and then posts about it on HN also doesn't take the time to choose a license.

Even if they didn't know CC wasn't suitable for software, everyone knows that non-commercial isn't Open Source.

I didn't dig into the software, but I wonder if the licenses for the dependencies allow this either, eg if any are GPL or similar.

> CC wasn't suitable for software

This is wrong. CC is perfectly fine for software in some cases, such as here.

Ok, CC is not tailored specifically for software, thus the general advice "you should use something else" but I do not see why CC would not be suitable here to achieve OP's goals.

Can someone explain?

Software licenses, especially the more "advanced" licences such as the GPL, MPL, and others include very specific language around the issue of what is use, what is distribution, what is is connecting to, derived works, and importantly, around patents.

The CC licenses do an amazing job when it comes to artistic work such as books, movies, music, etc. but you don't have the same issues there, and that's why even CC says that they don't recommend using them for software.

Creative Commons' FAQ addresses this

    Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do 
    not contain specific terms about the distribution 
    of source code, which is often important to ensuring 
    the free reuse and modifiability of software. 
    Many software licenses also address patent rights, 
    which are important to software but may not be 
    applicable to other copyrightable works. Additionally,
    our licenses are currently not compatible with the 
    major software licenses, so it would be difficult to 
    integrate CC-licensed work with other free software. 
    Existing software licenses were designed specifically
    for use with software and offer a similar set of 
    rights to the Creative Commons licenses.

As someone developing CC0-licensed software, this had me a bit shook, so let me highlight that your link does clarify that CC0 licenses are fine for software and are entirely separate from other CC licenses.

Relevant sub-link (from OP's link): https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC...

> And non-commercial licenses are not Open Source, period. This has been well established since the 1990s, both by the FSF and the OSI.

That may be a bit misleading - the Free Software Foundation has long held strong opinions about the phrase 'open source'.[0]

IIRC 'open source' became formalised by the OSI around 1998 - and despite the stated intent to clarify things where arguably no clarification was needed (a lot of people felt it was not too onerous to explain the beer and speech, libre and gratis, concepts to novices) it continues to reduce clarity. Viz.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....*

I disagree.

Ok, a non-commercial Creative Common license is not "OSI-open source" or "FSF-open source", but it is technically "open source". The source is open.

The open source societal movement is much broader than the narrow definition given by OSI or FSF.

OP, your tool is perfectly fine with a non-commercial creative common license. The fact that CC licenses are not specific for software does not imply it is a bad choice for software.

Here I find it is a very appropriate license for OP's needs : he wants to open the source code, but prevent that someone else takes it and makes money with it under another name. This is totally fine.

Then say source available, not open source, because the latter connotes the freedoms as mentioned in the OSI definition, for most people who use that phrase.

Open source is not trademarked by FSF or OSI. I think it is ok to call it open source since the source is open.

Let's not redefine words based on what you personally think is correct when people en masse have been using them to mean a certain specific concept. It does not have to be trademarked, it can have a de facto meaning that everyone generally understands to be what it means.

That's because "open source" is a bad name, since it only focuses on source code availability rather than three other essential freedoms. "Free/libre software" always made more sense, but "open source" got significantly more popular.

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