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People here know the difference or are easily able to understand it if they haven't been confronted with it.
No. They're trying to force a definition of open-source that does not exist to make it FOSS because FOSS people want everything to be FOSS so try to pressure people into it.
The definition is defined by dictionaries and it's different from what is said on here. Quite simply, they're wrong. They want it to mean one thing however the definition of the word by Oxford and Webster applies to what is done in that repo. It is open-source by the definition of the word by people who define and clarify words and not by FOSS devs who want everything to be FOSS. It is open-source! And the fact, people on here don't know that shows people on here don't know the difference.
Because of that, a lot of effort goes into helping make sure that software stacks are using consistent licenses. There's a whole industry of standards, audit processes, software and companies to help with this; for example, see:
Words have meanings they're collected and recorded in dictionaries, these are the source of truth for the definition of words. It's important that we have them so we can all talk and know what we mean. This is at the very core of languages.
This open source has to be FOSS is some straight-up bullshit by people who spend all their time in the FOSS community.
By every definition other than the FOSS community, this is open source. That is a fact.
Btw: FOSS means Free and Open Source Software. Even the FOSS community fundamentally says that open source does not neet to be free.
No, it's not. Please read number 5, it might enlighten you to what people colloquially consider open source, which didn't have a dictionary definition until technical people started using this definition: https://opensource.org/osd
>And the fact, people on here don't know that shows people on here don't know the difference.
..What? Do you know what OSS vs FOSS is?
Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.
As is the whole field of linguistics, as you will learn in the very first lecture in such a program. If the grammar rules you learned in school disagree with (any!) native speaker, the rules are wrong.
At the very least the direct consequence of
>If the grammar rules you learned in school disagree with (any!) native speaker, the rules are wrong.
is that every language has as many dialects as speakers.
Imo dictionaries are descriptive rather than prescriptive not because it is impossible to have prescriptive definitions or grammar, it is just that dictionaries do not even try; usually they just list common usage of words.
This is actually treated as linguistic fact, although we call them "idiolects" when we're talking about that level of granularity.
> not because it is impossible to have prescriptive definitions or grammar, it is just that dictionaries do not even try
They don't try because the field of linguistics has arrived at the conclusion that the role of the linguist is to document what is, not to prescribe what should be. They arrived at that conclusion by studying languages and discovering that they are far, far more messy than prescriptivists had hitherto believed.
The only role that prescriptivism has these days among serious academics is an acknowledgement that while all forms of language are well-structured according to well-defined grammatical rules, cultures assign value judgements to certain forms of speech and so it's valuable to learn your culture's value judgements and learn to speak and write in a way that earns you credibility in your culture.
But even this looks very different than the prescriptivism of old, because what forms of speech and writing get creds vary dramatically from generation to generation, place to place, and even context to context. Learning the grammatical rules taught in traditional schools will not help you fit in on modern social media.
For ex still cringe at people saying “anyways,” even though I know it’s a losing and pointless battle.
Not sure what the biggest driver is - being shamed while growing up, or just latent pedantry.
My issue is with the claim that there is no sense in which a native speaker can make a grammar error. Maybe we should call them "idiolect incongrueces" I do not care.
In my language there is a verb tense that is often misused, I often misuse it and I can hear the resulting sentence I say feel wrong. That is a grammar mistake the same way missing a note in a song is a mistake.
If linguists want to work towards reducing the stigma issues of standardized grammars I commend them and wish them good luck. But that is different from saying that grammar mistake do no exist.
I understand the sentiment of "the language is defined by its speakers", but this statement seems a bit overblown. According to that logic, it is literally impossible for someone to be incorrect about the meaning of a word.
Yeah, it's important to frame it in terms of idiolects and dialects—any given speaker has an idiolect, and that idiolect is worth describing and documenting uncritically. But that speaker also benefits from speaking a shared dialect with other speakers, and it's valuable for that speaker to be on the same page with other speakers of their dialect about definitions.
I think what OP is getting at is that it's not the role of linguistics to assign a value judgement to a given usage—there are merely benefits that speakers can derive from better understanding the dialects that they use in daily life.
TFA's license doesn't meet the definition you posted. It restricts who can use/redistribute/modify the software.
The average person would also assume that "open source" means "I can legally use this for my business", especially given that Gumroad is a tool that only makes sense if you're running some kind of business.
Unfortunately, this is true here only with a very large asterisk that says "as long as you never make more than $1 million in revenue". Anyone who attempts to treat this software as Open Source in the way they would treat, say, Postgres, will find that the instant they cross the $1 million threshold they have to rebuild their entire e-commerce setup or be in violation of copyright.
For some people maybe $1 million in revenue (not profits, revenue) is legitimately not possible and not worth worrying about. But for others it is, and that's why definitions matter.
(There's also the fact that, intentionally or unintentionally, the license assumes that you either have a business with some amount of revenue or are a government entity or nonprofit. Which means technically a strict reading of the license would suggest running the software without a business is not authorized.)
I've argued for years that "free" does NOT mean "free to use as long as you follow my restrictions". To me the only licenses that meet this criteria are the permissive ones such as MIT, BSD and friends where the only requirement is preservation of the copyright notice. The vast majority have limits of what you can do, or when you have to pay, or some other BS that just complicates everything and IMHO just reeks of "I'm manipulating the FOSS community so I can make a buck" or "I'm pretending to give this software away but actually have a laundry list of rules you have to live by". Basically the opposite of what "free" means!
Similarly, "open source" implies that I can do whatever I want, since it is "open". But most open source licenses - including this one - have restrictions and in many cases pretty strict ones that forbid use for many. This is not open at all.
Either give it away, or lock it up, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop with the hypocrisy, lying and wordplay so you can make a buck (or satisfy a religious tilt). If you want me to help you with your code then you gotta let me use it how I see fit!
And for the love of all things holy, quit calling restrictive licenses "free". This is a binary state, it is either free or non-free, and "you can only use this if you make less than X" or "only use this with other free software" or "if you make changes you have to share" are NOT FREE.
There. Thanks for reading. Stepping outside to yell at a cloud now. And get off my lawn.
Factually, this is not true. Facts outrank everything else.