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

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

#21

Post by Ekaros »

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.

I think it comes to analogies, with open source you have a public park you are free to use. With source available it is public park you are free to look at behind a fence... So not actually public park. Still a fine thing to exist.

As user as well. Difference between I can use this for free and I have to pay to use this. Even if I can see parts inside is significant.

It might not be real principle, but at least it is real difference.

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

#23

Post by nextaccountic »

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.

> bickering between people on the same team.

Uh.. are they?

I'm somewhat sympathetic to licenses that will be open source in X years, but the open source ethos is that, with proper attribution, we can do whatever with the code, the only restriction being that for some projects a derivative work needs to also be open source (while others don't care even about that)

If we were to welcome non-open source projects into a larger community, we should probably begin with licenses that forbid the usage of the software in military and things like that. Which fails to be open source for the same reason: it puts limits in how you can use the code

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

#25

Post by Incipient »

Personally I think differentiation between "open source" and "source available" is good.

Open source, is, essentially software that I expect to be able to use commercially and tweak if required - but I'm own my own, and I pay for support.

Source available means I can basically help debug issues I have...but I expect that a paid licence is required and will have a selection of limitations (number of nodes, etc).

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

#26

Post by jrowen »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #20
jrowen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

There was of course and I edited it out.

Why is it important to give "everything" to the users? They have the source code. Why is it so important that they can use it for whatever they want?

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

#27

Post by School-Cotton »

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.

They’re not at all on the same team. “Open source” is given away for free, to do what you want with it. Source available is not. Fundamentally they have nothing in common other than the fact that you are allowed to read the source code.

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

#28

Post by ModernMech »

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.

Not the same team. Open source isn't really about the license, and it's also not even really about the source; open source is a philosophy centering open development and collaboration. Sharing the source is necessary, but not sufficient. Too often, "source available" means you get to see the source, but you are not invited to participate in development, and certainly you're not going to be participating in collaboration.

"Source available" projects want the benefits of being associated with that egalitarian philosophy because it's popular amongst technologists, who are their initial customers. But they don't want to actually practice the philosophy because their core interest is protecting their IP to turn a profit, not open collaboration and development. Outside contributions are considered a liability in many source available projects [1].

This is important because source available projects have in the past resulted in a "rug pull", when the project gets enough airspeed, so they start putting more work into the closed source to placate their investors. Once the technologists are not the primary users, the entire source available charade is done. The available source becomes deprecated, features are moved to the closed source branch, and eventually the available source rots.

One final point: if we call source available "open source", then what are we going to call open source to differentiate it from source available. Because they're actually different things.

[1]: For example, many projects won't even allow outside contributions, but when they do, you'll have to sign some sort of contributor agreement: https://www.scylladb.com/open-source-nosql-database/contribu...

Edit: (this is to the response below me, as I'm rate limited now and I'm going to bed so I'll forget to post this tomorrow)

If anyone tried to do this then the project would be forked immediately. An open source project can go closed source, but as an OSS project, everyone should already have everything the need to keep it going despite that, and that all remains open. That's why we love open source.

Also, it'd be really hard to pull off if they've accepted a lot of outside contributions -- when you submit code to an open source project, you retain the copyright. This is not a problem as long as the project is licensed under the agreement under which they submitted the commit, which only grants rights to redistribute under that license. At least that's how it works with Apache 2.0 (I believe, IANAL). So to go closed source, they'd need agreements from all of their contributors to do so.

Now, it can happen. MongoDB is an example. But as far as I can tell, you'd have a hard time of it if you accepted contributions from people and they.

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

#29

Post by School-Cotton »

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…

> To me this is just as much "not open source" as a specific no-compete with the primary project sponsor.

It’s massively different from source-available in that anyone can fork it for free and start developing it themselves however they want. Just because one fork of the project (the original one) follows a closed development model doesn’t change anything about the code, what you can do with it, and how others can develop it.

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