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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

#141

Post by seba_dos1 »

bayindirh wrote: post #132
jillesvangurp wrote: post #67

I always wonder why people bother with providing source under a source available license. It makes outside contributions a lot less likely. Your active community of people working on the code base effectively becomes your employees. There's little to no benefit to outside users. Any work they do on the code is effectively free work they do for you that entitles them to nothing. Including free usage and distribution o…

As others said, being able to audit software and point out bugs is thousand times better than hunting in the dark if there's no Open or Free alternative is available. Compiling it yourself and comparing with the binary you have (reproducible building) is billion times better. I personally choose Free Software first and Open Source Software second. However, if I have to choose between two proprietary options, I'd choo…

> I personally choose Free Software first and Open Source Software second.

Given that functionally these terms are pretty much equivalent, how do you decide which project is Free Software and which is Open Source? By how it calls itself?

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

#142

Post by ModernMech »

nevon wrote: post #48
ModernMech wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intent. Do you intent to be a genuinely open community and is it set up around fostering that dynamic as a central aspect of development? It's hard to measure intent, but we can do so indirectly by looking at the project structure: - Are there contributor guidelines? - Do contributors have to sign a waiver before they can contribute any code? - Is there a RFC process? - Does the project actually respond meaningfully…

Completely disagree. To me, and the OSI, none of those things other than redistribution and forking have anything to do with being open source or not. In fact, you could have a closed source project tick nearly all of those boxes, although that would indeed be very unusual. I'm not sure if there is a term for what you are describing. Perhaps "community driven project".

That's the fun part; neither you, nor the OSI, get to make that determination!

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

#143

Post by nevon »

ModernMech wrote: post #142
nevon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree. To me, and the OSI, none of those things other than redistribution and forking have anything to do with being open source or not. In fact, you could have a closed source project tick nearly all of those boxes, although that would indeed be very unusual. I'm not sure if there is a term for what you are describing. Perhaps "community driven project".

That's the fun part; neither you, nor the OSI, get to make that determination!

I suppose that's true, but it makes it quite hard to communicate specific concepts if everyone gets to come up with their own definition of existing terms. I'm aware that language evolves, but at least at the moment, expecting projects to be community driven just because they use the term open source when describing themselves will set you up for conflict if they are referring to the conventional definition of the term and don't also happen to want to run a community driven project.

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

#144

Post by birjolaxew »

Ekaros wrote: post #21
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…

Wouldn't it be more along the lines of "source available" being a public park that you're free to access but can't monetize by e.g. selling tickets to - while "open source" would let you do whatever you want with the park.

Ironically I think the analogy explains why many people find "source available" to align with their moral compass more than "open source" necessarily does.

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

#146

Post by jrowen »

danlitt wrote: post #76
jrowen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Giving the users source code and no rights to do anything with it really doesn't give them very much. Software freedom advocates are not just nerds who really enjoy reading source code. The point is that if you have the source code and the right to change it then you take control of the activity the software is doing, or helping you to do. If you don't have control, being able to read the source code is not very usef…

Well certainly there is some reasonable middle ground between everything and nothing, which is presumably what licenses like this one are trying to explore? People are afforded rights beyond just looking at it, they can run it, modify it, learn from it, there's just some specific things that are carved out (to my understanding as a layperson).

Every major voice that I've seen comment on this thus far seems to acknowledge the value and the rationale behind the license, they're just saying you can't call it open source.

Would you say that the "free software" and "open source" movements are largely synonymous? I guess I thought free software was a more strict subset that has the "all or nothing" philosophy centered around truly "free" software. Which is honorable and commendable. But is there really no room for stuff that's a little more gray area? I get the rug pull, I get that it's not truly owned by the community, but it still seems like a useful ally and a step in the right direction from fully closed source. With support there could be norms and culture developed to safeguard from bad behavior.

The context of what the software does should also be taken into account. The best arguments I've seen in this thread revolve around the idea that you can trust that you can pull an "open source" library into your project without hesitation. That is a beautiful "free as in libre" building blocks vision. But the software in question here is a completed end-user product. It's not ever intended to be used in another project. But they want to make some kind of good-faith effort to share and be more "open" than normal proprietary SaaS. Instead of this being a good thing it's a huge drama because it's not enough. At least that's my read.

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

#147

Post by geerlingguy »

comex wrote: post #114
jillesvangurp wrote: post #67

I always wonder why people bother with providing source under a source available license. It makes outside contributions a lot less likely. Your active community of people working on the code base effectively becomes your employees. There's little to no benefit to outside users. Any work they do on the code is effectively free work they do for you that entitles them to nothing. Including free usage and distribution o…

Counterpoint: I’ve often wished the proprietary software I use was source-available so that I could fix bugs for myself. The idea of doing free work for a company does feel weird. But when some bug is really getting on my nerves, being able to fix it and not have to deal with it anymore is a huge benefit!

This; there are a couple 'freeware' style apps I use where the developer sticks a source tarball on a website alongside the download. Having access to that means I can tweak something for a weird scenario, or fix a bug on a new OS release, and if I want, I can send the patch back to the developer.

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

#148

Post by jrowen »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #39
jrowen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

The leak is not open source because it was not blessed by the creators. If we're worried about rug pull stuff, maybe there's some type of governance or commitments that can be worked out. Ultimately yeah we're at the whim of the company, but that's the status quo, this still seems like a step in the right direction to be encouraged and fostered and not shit on. I just don't think the hardline strategy is really winning hearts and minds to the cause.

> 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.

Is this really that ornery? In practice, with a license like this, are people doing benign things hunted down and hassled? The whole "I can do whatever I want and never get sued" angle kinda seems a little selfish or at least not super good-samaritan? I recall the brouhaha over the "don't do evil" license. Can't we find a good-faith agreement between interests?

I replied to a sibling with further comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221378

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

#149

Post by bloppe »

preisschild wrote: post #119
bloppe wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BUSL license requires shifting to an open-source license no later than 4 years after publication. I'd be happy to contribute to a BUSL-licensed project knowing my contributions will shift to an MIT license within 4 years. And the original authors don't have to worry as much about Amazon eating their lunch.

While that is certainly better, the original point still stands. If the company goes bust the latest source code will only be open source after 4 years. By that time other software has likely taken over the need in the first place, because not having that need fulfilled for 4 years is mostly not reasonable. And older versions often don't have compatibility with new versions either.

A bankrupt company will try to sell the rights to the software. If nobody buys it, and it's completely written off the balance sheet, then most likely they will just flip to an open source license ahead of schedule.

And if they don't, 4 years isn't that long to wait for something that nobody wanted to buy in a fire sale anyway. Especially if you're free to use it the entire time, just not resell it.

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

#150

Post by bloppe »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #128
rdsubhas wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago, I used to consult with Fortune 500 companies that run Oracle and IBM products (web servers and Java frameworks). These are distributed as enterprise binaries. It's common to face _at least_ one or two weird errors in production. Then you have to raise a ticket to support. Would you like to know how it is discussing a binary-obfuscated error with Customer support? And then after few weeks being assigned…

That's a great reason I steer clear of products like that. Oracle is not a DB I've used since 2005. There's no need. The market for closed sourced databases imploded to basically legacy products that predate when open source databases became a sane default choice. I guess some banks/insurers still might talk themselves into believing it's a sane choice for new projects. I guess source available is better than source…

> But it's a weak substitute for proper open source that you can just fork and fix if you need

Many source-available licenses explicitly allow this, as long as you don't try to sell your fix commercially to others. You can certainly share it with others, it just has to be free of charge.

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