Healthy open source communities don’t just form around code, but also around shared values and a vision for how their work can improve the world. The true measure of the success of open source is its impact— how the technologies we develop are leveraged to bring about positive social, cultural, and political change.
The term “open source software” was coined specifically to refer to software licensing that recognizes a particular set of freedoms. It is not a generic term for source-available software, and never was.
One of the freedoms of open source is “no discrimination against fields of endeavor.”
Calling the Hippocratic license family “open source” is inaccurate, since its entire goal is to discriminate against certain fields of endeavor.
It’s better described as a sort of source-available license.
It is not a generic term for source-available software, and never was.
The problem with that reasoning is that precedence and origin do not necessarily define language use after it. Language evolves. Society and communities make up new or change definitions.
Misuse of the term is evidence that it’s not universally understood to be one way.
I think it’s mainly because “open source” can be understood as accessible, readable source. And many people seem to intuitively understand it as such. The “free” terminology on the other hand has a more ambiguous meaning between freedom and no cost. And early on, the “freeware” terminology was established as a differentiation to “free software”. “Open source” does not have such an equivalent established differentiation (like “source-available”, which seems to be just not as prevalent, maybe because there have been much fewer products with that alone).
I understand the desire to correct, specifically with the established OSD. But I have to wonder if it will ever bear fruit, given these circumstances. And in consequence, whether it’s even worth to point out.
That’s cool, I guess, who’s gonna enforce it tho
Congratulations!
As the millionth person to have said this this month, you have been chosen as the lucky winner who gets to enforce it.Do keep your inbox clean for possible enforcement requests from OSS project owners, maintainers and developers.
Oh lmao
I get where this is coming from, and it’s good to move away from the libertarian fantasy that technology is neutral. But in practice, it is very hard to actually use.
For example, you can’t use any GPL code that you may want to include, as that forces your project to also become GPL. And anyone using your code would also have to walk on eggshells for licensing, and they would probably just avoid it in the first place.
It might be useful to some very specific end products, but this will likely not see a lot of adoption.
And already the purists are going “if I may interject for a moment” or screaming “reeeee”, as was expected. It’s like they can’t comprehend that the world has changed and that text written 25 years ago doesn’t stay correct, applicable, or right forever.
The pearl clutching gasp of “but this is against scripture” truly never gets old.
