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Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising

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Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising

#101

Post by prepend »

kube-system wrote: post #86
busterarm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They determined the guidelines of what constitutes being Open Source. Absolutely they should control the term. Just look at all of the companies out there with "source-available" licenses masquerading as Open Source. Neo4j themselves here uses "Open Source" in all of their marketing materials and should be just as guilty as this fork of false advertising.

1. “Open source” as a term predates the OSI 2. There are organizations other than OSI which have their own opinions on what they consider a “valid” open source license. 3. Some licenses are functionally open source but not approved by OSI because of their limited use. Furthermore, public domain works aren’t licensed at all. 4. OSI has no trademark on “open source”. OSI’s opinion is only as good as other people agree…

> There are organizations other than OSI which have their own opinions on what they consider a “valid” open source license.

What other organizations have credible claims?

I’ve only heard of companies that have created non-open licenses and are trying to redefine the term (eg, open core, etc)

Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising

#102

Post by prepend »

hn_version_0023 wrote: post #77
busterarm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They determined the guidelines of what constitutes being Open Source. Absolutely they should control the term. Just look at all of the companies out there with "source-available" licenses masquerading as Open Source. Neo4j themselves here uses "Open Source" in all of their marketing materials and should be just as guilty as this fork of false advertising.

Hard disagreement from me. The courts get to decide, not some random organization that clearly has an interest in promoting themselves.

OSI is not random and, while not perfect, are a pretty good steward of the concept. They’re a non-profit with a clear goal and broad membership.

Not sure who else would be better.

Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising

#103

Post by kube-system »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #73
mkr-hn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of this in terms of a brand defending their trademark to avoid losing it through dilution. It's Open Source, a term they created, not a generic concept "open source." I don't like them owning a term that feels like it should be generic and communally defined, but it's not, and they do.

Do they even claim to own the term? They are the Open Source Initiative, stewards of the Open Source Definition. The closest I see is a rule then when you're using the OSI trademark or logo you need to follow their definition of "Open Source".

They don't claim to own it, because they legally do not have a right to it. They tried to register it and failed.

Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising

#104

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

righttoolforjob wrote: post #87

Who is getting sued here? The post mentions Neo4j in the initial paragraph, but then it shifts to talking about someone who tried to promote their fork as open source. Shouldn't Neo4j be sued as well for falsely claiming to be open source then?

This is related to a long ongoing court battle between Neo4j and Graph Found (ONgDB). Basically the latter forked the former but removed some clauses from the license they weren't supposed to remove, and this tangential ruling is basically stating that they can't call it open source in their advertising because of that. Related reading: https://casetext.com/case/neo4j-inc-v-graph-found-inc

Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising

#105

Post by jayp1418 »

cosydney wrote: post #3

Does anyone recommend some documentations to know all the licences vs open source? I'm thinking of launching one of our project in open source but don't want to end up in this kind or articles ^^

Worth a read : http://netbsd.org/about/redistribution.html

Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising

#106

Post by kube-system »

rectang wrote: post #100
kube-system wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Open source" is not a legal trademark of OSI. The idea that "open source" means what OSI says it means is purely an opinion.

Yeah, but if you try to bullshit a proprietary license as "open source" you're going to catch hell from a whole lot of people. It's not just the OSI that has a stake in the OSD. A few companies have tried it and backed off.

Yes, you will get criticism, depending on the circumstances. If it's proprietary, sure, if it's public domain, probably not.

Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising

#107

Post by [deleted] »

chrisseaton wrote: post #69
busterarm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have every right to dictate the meaning of the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software Read the first section.

> They have every right to dictate the meaning of the term. I mean this is just factually not true. They have no such right. They tried to trademark it, but failed because it's just a generic term.

[deleted]

Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising

#108

Post by mintplant »

josefx wrote: post #55
mintplant wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the part of the decision I don't understand. The AGPL seems pretty clear: > All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.

As far as I understand it was never legally AGPL licensed, it was licensed on a custom license that just happened to merge AGPL and commons clause. The commons clause in this case is not an addition to existing AGPL licensed code.

I don't think this argument holds, because Section 7 refers to "this License", which the AGPL text defines specifically as:

> "This License" refers to version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License.

Thus I don't think that references to "this License" within the portion of their custom license that is the verbatim AGPL text would automatically expand to also encompass the tacked-on Commons Clause text.

Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising

#109

Post by kube-system »

prepend wrote: post #101
kube-system wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. “Open source” as a term predates the OSI 2. There are organizations other than OSI which have their own opinions on what they consider a “valid” open source license. 3. Some licenses are functionally open source but not approved by OSI because of their limited use. Furthermore, public domain works aren’t licensed at all. 4. OSI has no trademark on “open source”. OSI’s opinion is only as good as other people agree…

> There are organizations other than OSI which have their own opinions on what they consider a “valid” open source license. What other organizations have credible claims? I’ve only heard of companies that have created non-open licenses and are trying to redefine the term (eg, open core, etc)

The organizations that you think are credible, are credible. The term is not legally protected.

Personally, when Subway calls their sandwiches "good", I think they are actually making non-good sandwiches, and they're trying to redefine the term.

Both "good" and "open source" are descriptive terms that are subjective. The OSI recognizes this themselves:

> "Open Source" is not and cannot become a trademark.

> there is virtually no chance that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would register the mark "open source"; the mark is too descriptive

https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...

Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising

#110

Post by righttoolforjob »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #104
righttoolforjob wrote: post #87

Who is getting sued here? The post mentions Neo4j in the initial paragraph, but then it shifts to talking about someone who tried to promote their fork as open source. Shouldn't Neo4j be sued as well for falsely claiming to be open source then?

This is related to a long ongoing court battle between Neo4j and Graph Found (ONgDB). Basically the latter forked the former but removed some clauses from the license they weren't supposed to remove, and this tangential ruling is basically stating that they can't call it open source in their advertising because of that. Related reading: https://casetext.com/case/neo4j-inc-v-graph-found-inc

I understand it a bit differently. They could not remove the clause (as they do not dictate the license), so the clause stays. The software is thus licensed the same way as the original repo and neither can be called open source.

Whoever sued these folks for false advertising should sue Neo4j as well.

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