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Comment by otterley | Hacker News Reader

These are motion pictures, not software. “Open source” is about the latter.

It's not popular, but even creative commons, the organisation that wrote the licence they are using, prefers the term "free cultural work" https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/freeworks/

They're "we won't sue you for using these" bytes. The terminology might be fuzzy but I feel like everyone in this thread understands the concept.

But... you'll see Netflix calls it "OPEN SOURCE CONTENT" if you click the link.

You are right! At least the link title got it right.

I believe open source is about the law. Software is one way it can be applied.

IAAL (but this is not legal advice).

Anyone can freely license a work to the public, and copyright holders were doing that long before modern computers were invented.

“Open source” (other than, say, in the context of open water sources or intelligence or journalistic sources, where it was rarely used) as a descriptive term did not enter the common lexicon until 1998 and that was specifically to refer to software source code.

https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source...

IANAL, but I think open source started with software since software has source and binary form. Now with compression and other shenanigans, probably even videos or images could be argued to have a source and binary form. I don't know a thing about multimedia, but people here saying this "open source" release is a good thing mention specifically the fact that it's the uncompressed version, or as the FSF would call it, "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it".

You’re correct but words and phrases can evolve in their meaning over time. If the licensing terms for this are analogous to open source software licensing terms then calling it “open source media” is pretty reasonable.

I’m all for linguistic evolution as long as it decreases ambiguity and confusion, as opposed to exacerbating it. See: “literally.”

It's awful what happened to literally. The enormity of the change in meaning is so egregious. When it literally gets used with both meanings in the same conversation, decimating my brain, I have to wonder how nonplussed anyone trying to learn English must be. I'm sure there are plenty of words it's happened to, but this must the most egregious example.

Is it decimating your brain literally or figuratively? You only have one, after all.

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