Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'Source available' is not open source, and that's okay

dri.es

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 172 posts

Re: 'Source available' is not open source, and that's okay

#11

Post by cortesoft »

RossBencina wrote: post #2

Interesting. The post is about whether a license prohibiting SaaS competitors is "open source" and whether it might work out as a good way to ensure project sustainability. In this context "source available" means that you have the source code but you can't use it to compete with the project owner. [Kinda puts Omarchy in a different light don't you think?] There is another, I think different, form of "source availabl…

How easy do you have to make it to contribute to be considered “open source”. Obviously, no project accepts every single pull request. Where is the line between “open source” and “no open source” in your definition?

Re: 'Source available' is not open source, and that's okay

#12

Post by Supermancho »

jrowen wrote: post #6

What principles and values of the open source movement are protected by staunchly refusing to allow "source available" to call itself open source? To an outsider it looks like counterproductive bickering between people on the same team.

Some people have internalized the words "open" "source" to mean more than the words, even going so far as to eschew the benefit (which was at the heart of the Stallman problem) because it doesn't fit the desired ethos and license. It's counterproductive, indeed.

Re: 'Source available' is not open source, and that's okay

#14

Post by simonw »

jrowen wrote: post #6

What principles and values of the open source movement are protected by staunchly refusing to allow "source available" to call itself open source? To an outsider it looks like counterproductive bickering between people on the same team.

If something is open source and follows an OSI approved license I don't have to ask a lawyer to review the license before I integrate with that code.

The moment you change a single line of that license I now have to pay extremely close attention to those details again.

This isn't a naive idealism thing - there are very solid, boring, selfish reasons for caring about this.

Re: 'Source available' is not open source, and that's okay

#16

Post by jrowen »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #10
jrowen wrote: post #6

What principles and values of the open source movement are protected by staunchly refusing to allow "source available" to call itself open source? To an outsider it looks like counterproductive bickering between people on the same team.

> What principles and values of the open source movement are protected by staunchly refusing to allow "source available" to call itself open source? The part where the license says "Don't run this on your server and charge people money for it, or we will sue you"? I know that everyone thinks of Big Tech absorbing your project into their SaaS when they do this, but there are other ways (say AGPL) to combat that. O'Saa…

I didn't ask which part of the license violates OSS values, I asked what those principles and values are. I will infer that "anybody can do whatever they want with the code" is the principle you are referring to.

I kind of thought that it was more about stuff like sharing and personal development and edification and the ability to see inside and understand things. But let's get really divisive over the money stuff.

Re: 'Source available' is not open source, and that's okay

#17

Post by zx8080 »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #10
jrowen wrote: post #6

What principles and values of the open source movement are protected by staunchly refusing to allow "source available" to call itself open source? To an outsider it looks like counterproductive bickering between people on the same team.

> What principles and values of the open source movement are protected by staunchly refusing to allow "source available" to call itself open source? The part where the license says "Don't run this on your server and charge people money for it, or we will sue you"? I know that everyone thinks of Big Tech absorbing your project into their SaaS when they do this, but there are other ways (say AGPL) to combat that. O'Saa…

> The part where the license says "Don't run this on your server and charge people money for it, or we will sue you"?

A bit offtopic but could re-generation of the project with LLM (with for example prompt "rewrite the changing every line of code") help protecting from being sued? If yes, then the OS licensing is doomed to fail.

Re: 'Source available' is not open source, and that's okay

#18

Post by simonw »

jrowen wrote: post #16
quadrifoliate wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What principles and values of the open source movement are protected by staunchly refusing to allow "source available" to call itself open source? The part where the license says "Don't run this on your server and charge people money for it, or we will sue you"? I know that everyone thinks of Big Tech absorbing your project into their SaaS when they do this, but there are other ways (say AGPL) to combat that. O'Saa…

I didn't ask which part of the license violates OSS values, I asked what those principles and values are. I will infer that "anybody can do whatever they want with the code" is the principle you are referring to. I kind of thought that it was more about stuff like sharing and personal development and edification and the ability to see inside and understand things. But let's get really divisive over the money stuff.

It's about unambiguously understanding exactly what my rights are and how I can use that code.

In the case of the janky new 37signals license: what exactly counts as "... where the primary value of the service is the functionality of the Software itself"?

Who gets to define the "primary value" of the thing I built?

Re: 'Source available' is not open source, and that's okay

#19

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

jrowen wrote: post #6

What principles and values of the open source movement are protected by staunchly refusing to allow "source available" to call itself open source? To an outsider it looks like counterproductive bickering between people on the same team.

FOSS was founded on The Four Essential Freedoms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#T... that GPL/LGPL were devised to embody. Shared source licenses don't adhere to freedom 0.

Re: 'Source available' is not open source, and that's okay

#20

Post by quadrifoliate »

jrowen wrote: post #16
quadrifoliate wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What principles and values of the open source movement are protected by staunchly refusing to allow "source available" to call itself open source? The part where the license says "Don't run this on your server and charge people money for it, or we will sue you"? I know that everyone thinks of Big Tech absorbing your project into their SaaS when they do this, but there are other ways (say AGPL) to combat that. O'Saa…

I didn't ask which part of the license violates OSS values, I asked what those principles and values are. I will infer that "anybody can do whatever they want with the code" is the principle you are referring to. I kind of thought that it was more about stuff like sharing and personal development and edification and the ability to see inside and understand things. But let's get really divisive over the money stuff.

I apologize for having missed the mark with your question.

> I will infer that "anybody can do whatever they want with this code, OR ELSE YOU'RE NOT WORTHY" is the principle you are referring to.

I feel like there's cynicism in your phrasing, but a perhaps more neutral phrasing would be "Don't pick and choose what specific circumstances your users can use this for".

Post reply on HN