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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

#151

Post by bawolff »

Beltalowda wrote: post #140
yawaramin wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's first important to define what we're talking about, before talking about it. If a certain set of people have 'a very clear and very specific meaning' of what it is, and another set 'doesn't really have the clear specific meaning', then I think it's pretty obvious which definition we should go with.

It's not obvious at all. There are many people who have all sorts of very specific ideas about language and how it ought to be used. They are usually ignored by everyone except themselves and people who agree with them already. I don't get why so many people are so obsessed with language. Over the last few decades terabytes of data has been used to discus this, and to what effect? I would actually argue it's been a n…

If you're talking hacker vs cracker, linux vs GNU/linux, then sure, its mostly a waste of air.

As far as "open source" goes, its in essence a brand of a cultural movement. And like real brands, some unscrupulous people want to enrich themselves off the brand by making a substandard product but pretending its the real thing. This is harmful to users who are swindled and it is harmful to open source devs whose reputation are stained by association. (To make the metaphor concrete, an example of a swindle would be someone makes open source software which isnt really, then sues all its users that use it in an open source fashion. This hurts the users, but also hurts people who make open source software because people cant trust the brand anymore)

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

#153

Post by account42 »

Gigachad wrote: post #130
ttybird2 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSI has been trying really hard to claim the term for themselves in a dishonest way, even though they were not the ones that invented it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26507460

The OSI definition of open source matches what almost everyone thinks of open source. It's the most useful definition. The Stallman gang have wasted over a decade trying to redefine open source to weaker terms making it useless and insisting that everyone use "Free software" instead which is insane since the world does and always will think of free as in money.

> The Stallman gang have wasted over a decade trying to redefine open source to weaker terms

No they haven't. The disagreement over free software vs. open source is about the idea behind it not about what rights are granted by open source or free software licenses.

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

#154

Post by account42 »

Gigachad wrote: post #132
drdaeman wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all may have different opinions about Stallman, but one - I believe - undeniable thing is that he's an extreme purist/idealist, and he would ceaselessly fight for any cause he believes in. Even for a totally lost one. And here, "open source" is practical, but "free/libre software" captures the essence (which "open source" misses).

Open source as defined by the OSI which is what most people agree with, is exactly identical to what RMS calls free software. RMS wants open source to mean what most people call "source available". We have the terms source available and open source which are well understood and has no ambiguity but RMS and the FSF want to push their free software term and have to change open source so their term isn't obsolete. It's…

> RMS wants open source to mean what most people call "source available".

This is not true.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

> by Richard Stallman

> The terms “free software” and “open source” stand for almost the same range of programs.

The article goes into some cases where RMS considers OSS to cover things that are not free software but these are about small details and certainly don't include anything close to "source available".

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

#155

Post by account42 »

warp wrote: post #12
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 ^^

https://opensource.org/licenses/category is the list of all Open Source licenses vetted by the OSI (open source initiative). Other licenses may be open source, but you'd probably have to get lawyers involved to make sure. So it's better to just pick a license which the OSI considers Open Source. If you don't want to rely on just the OSI, you can also check what the Free Software Foundation, Debian and Red Hat think o…

Moreover, picking an existing popular open source license is important because a and b being opensource licenses does not mean that they are compatible, i.e. they could still have mutually-incompatible requirements that prevent anyone from releasing a combination of a-licensed and b-licensed code.

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

#156

Post by account42 »

rectang wrote: post #148
remram wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's public domain then it is open source as per the OSI definition.

Replace "public domain" with "CC0" and it's a fair point. OSI hasn't approved CC0, and it's worth questioning how important OSI's whitelist is, or whether they should be the ones curating it. But everybody kinda knows that CC0 is more or less in the spirit of the OSD (so long as there are no patents involved) and OSI doesn't go around hollering about it, because it's not that important. As opposed to the Commons Clau…

> Replace "public domain" with "CC0" and it's a fair point. OSI hasn't approved CC0

From https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero

> CC0 was not explicitly rejected, but the License Review Committee was unable to reach consensus that it should be approved, and Creative Commons eventually withdrew the application. The most serious of the concerns raised had to do with the effects of clause 4(a), which reads: "No ... patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.". While many open source licenses simply do not mention patents, it is exceedingly rare for open source licenses to explicitly disclaim any conveyance of patent rights, and the Committee felt that approving such a license would set a dangerous precedent, and possibly even weaken patent infringement defenses available to users of software released under CC0.

So it's more that there are concerns and nobody has cared enough to fully resolve them to arrive at a clear answer. It's also not like the CC licenses are commonly used for software so this is not surprising.

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

#157

Post by remram »

kube-system wrote: post #150
remram wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's public domain then it is open source as per the OSI definition.

That is not OSIs position. For example: https://opensource.org/node/878

The argument there is:

> it’s impossible to make a globally applicable statement that a certain piece of software is in the public domain

Not that something truly in the public domain is not open source.

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

#158

Post by ttybird2 »

bawolff wrote: post #151
Beltalowda wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not obvious at all. There are many people who have all sorts of very specific ideas about language and how it ought to be used. They are usually ignored by everyone except themselves and people who agree with them already. I don't get why so many people are so obsessed with language. Over the last few decades terabytes of data has been used to discus this, and to what effect? I would actually argue it's been a n…

If you're talking hacker vs cracker, linux vs GNU/linux, then sure, its mostly a waste of air. As far as "open source" goes, its in essence a brand of a cultural movement. And like real brands, some unscrupulous people want to enrich themselves off the brand by making a substandard product but pretending its the real thing. This is harmful to users who are swindled and it is harmful to open source devs whose reputati…

"And like real brands, some unscrupulous people want to enrich themselves off the brand by making a substandard product but pretending its the real thing"

I am unsure if you mean the OSI people or the people who disagree with the OSI definition here.

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

#159

Post by phendrenad2 »

thayne wrote: post #113
phendrenad2 wrote: post #7

IANAL, but it seems to me that the court has only decided that if you fork software, and break it's license by removing clauses that aren't permitted to be removed (think removing one of the 3 clauses in a 3-clause BSD license), then you're distributing the software under a license that is a lie, and thus invalid, and thus not "open-source". Could this be used as precedent if you release software and claim that it's…

> Could this be used as precedent if you release software and claim that it's open-source, but don't provide full source or even any source at all? Probably not IMHO. That would be unfortunate, because there are companies that claim their products are "open source" even though they clearly aren't. For example pritunl markets their product as open source on their website, but while the source code is available on gith…

Yea there are many many companies that do this. Maybe we need a "hall of shame" to call them out. Maybe we can give out "Biggest Open Source Liar" awards.

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

#160

Post by yawaramin »

Beltalowda wrote: post #140
yawaramin wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's first important to define what we're talking about, before talking about it. If a certain set of people have 'a very clear and very specific meaning' of what it is, and another set 'doesn't really have the clear specific meaning', then I think it's pretty obvious which definition we should go with.

It's not obvious at all. There are many people who have all sorts of very specific ideas about language and how it ought to be used. They are usually ignored by everyone except themselves and people who agree with them already. I don't get why so many people are so obsessed with language. Over the last few decades terabytes of data has been used to discus this, and to what effect? I would actually argue it's been a n…

People are obsessed about it because on one side you have a bunch of people trying to redefine it to mean whatever set of obligations they feel like e.g. 'You open sourced it so now you're responsible for it' etc. etc. and on the other side you have people trying to hold the line and say 'No, that's not what open source means'.

You're basically arguing to turn 'OSS' into a meaningless blob of text that anyone can interpret as they like.

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