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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

#31

Post by jrowen »

simonw wrote: post #18
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.

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?

So would you say that (in your opinion) a source available license could in theory call itself open source, if it used language you found to be unambiguous about your rights? Or is that not possible?

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

#32

Post by scheeseman486 »

jrowen wrote: post #26
quadrifoliate wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Being able to fork a project when management turns hostile is one of the most effective ways GPL software protects itself from enshittification and corporate sabotage. Source available does nothing to prevent this.

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

#33

Post by jasonkester »

School-Cotton wrote: post #27
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.

Indeed. One is given away for free to do whatever you want with it. The other is given away for free to do whatever you want except to be a dick.

If you’re not planning to be a dick, they’re functionally identical.

It’s an improvement.

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

#34

Post by jrowen »

simonw wrote: post #14
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.

This is a good technical point. But this seems to kind of argue that one of the principles of open source is that businesses should be able to pull it into their proprietary projects to make money without hesitation. Is that accurate? I thought that was kind of more of a bonus.

I feel like it's participating in the spirit of open source and should be welcomed, if someone wants to make their code available but just wants to try and restrict anything-goes usage. But I can see the purity argument.

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

#35

Post by sofixa »

Incipient wrote: post #25

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).

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

Maybe, but I think that "source available" isn't detailed enough and can mean many many different things.

> 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).

Point in case. For me there is one group, under something like BSL or FSL or SSPL which mostly restricts you from competing with the project's creators (e.g. making your own SaaS out of it), but everything else is fair use, you can use it in prod to make money at any size, etc. And a separate, more restrictive one, which has size, or production restrictions (you can't run the software if you're a commercial entity).

Source available sounds like a good description for the second one, because it's just available, little more. But for the first one where you can do whatever you want with one single exception that doesn't impact 99.9999% of potential users, it's not a good and clear enough description.

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

#36

Post by sofixa »

wvenable wrote: post #9

> DHH's choice of license reacts to a real pressure in open source: many companies make real money from open source software while leaving the hard work of building and maintaining it to others. If you don't want start a business and make real money from your software then denying that to others is antithetical to the concept of open source and free software. That being said; I have no issue with a developer choosing…

> If you don't want start a business and make real money from your software then denying that to others is antithetical to the concept of open source and free software.

What if you do and have done so, yet you're competing with e.g. AWS, GCP, Azure, who can do it for cheaper than you due to scale, and also have a much easier time to sell an extra line item to their existing customers vs you having to go through commercial negotiations and purchase agreements? Cf. Elastic, Redis, etc.

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

#38

Post by sofixa »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #3

O'Sassy or whatever is certainly Source available, and not Open Source. DHH can pound sand. I used to think the pedantry was foolish, but I've grown to understand the distinction. It's one thing to criticize the OSI's claim to the term, and I do think they could do a better job at getting out ahead of new licenses and whatnot, but even if you ignore OSI entirely then the distinction is of substantial value. I do thin…

> I do think we need more Source Available licenses in the world. Certainly I would greatly appreciate being able to browse the source of the many proprietary software systems I've administered over the years.

I think we need more differentiation and different terms. Because O'Sassy / FSL / whatever that just forbids other companies from selling the same software as a Service is quite different than just the source being available with no rights at all, or with restrictions on who can use it and when (size of company, for profit or not, production, etc).

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

#39

Post by quadrifoliate »

jrowen wrote: post #26
quadrifoliate wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> They have the source code.

This can also be true, say, of a dump of leaked Windows source code. Would you say that that's Open Source? Why not? What's different between that and Fizzy? Fizzy's creators will also sue you in certain cases.

> Why is it so important that they can use it for whatever they want?

It's important only in terms of the ethics of calling yourself open. The OSI (and many other commenters here, and me) are saying that open source should be defined by lack of restrictions on the usage; DHH etc. are saying that it should be defined by lack of restrictions on the access.

The reasons why I think usage-based definition rather than access-based definitions are more reasonable are:

- Providing access to code is relatively cheap/easy today. This wasn't always true in the past.

- Usage has a lot more variables than access. If you start putting restrictions on it, anyone using it has to stop and think about their usage to ensure it's not falling afoul of the restrictions. For example, if I put Fizzy on my server and provide free access to it for anyone on the internet without the 1000-item limit, does that qualify as "directly compet[ing] with the original Licensor by offering it to third parties as a hosted Cloud Service"? I would hope not, but if I want to make sure I have to pay a lawyer hundreds of dollars.

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

#40

Post by jrowen »

ModernMech wrote: post #28
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 collabora…

Haven't open source projects done the rug pull too? Can't they relicense new code going forward?

I guess I would have thought of source available as existing under the open source umbrella. I get that there is an important distinction but from an adoption and evangelism standpoint it seems like an unnecessary crusade to push them away.

Do those projects have a strong track record of behaving badly? Do you think DHH has those types of intentions? (I don't know much about him really)

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