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Comment by elashri | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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