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The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising
21–30 of 160 posts
Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree with some of their requirements for open source licenses, and will continue to call the code that I have open sourced over the years as "open source" despite them. Their attempt to occupy the term is a little offensive. Correction: They came up with the name, so it's theirs. I'll leave my public embarrassment here.
They occupy the term because they literally coined it, if you know your history.[1] OS came to us from the OSD, written by the OSI and after hot debate in the early days of what should and shouldn't be Free Software. It was specifically a reaction to the FSF and a rejection of that group's activism, which didn't fit what they were trying to do. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software (specifically the…
You are correct. I will retract my statement.
Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising
#23Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising
#24I don't like that OSI seems to somehow come away with this (at least as framed here) with control of the term. I agree just calling whatever nonsense open-source is problematic, but I don't agree it has to be one of their licenses to be open source at all .
Yes and no. On the one hand, I agree that OSI seems like a fairly arbitrary entity and in the abstract I would agree that they shouldn't control it. On the other hand, 99 times out of 100 if someone is making that argument with reference to a specific license, it means they're trying to claim their software is open source when it isn't and just want to pretend that they can redefine the term themselves. So I tend to ignore my theoretical dislike and practically accept the OSI definition of OSS.
Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising
#25Does 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 ^^
Neither is super up to date, but these should cover the important stuff:
- Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing[1]
- Open Source Licensing[2]
And then Producing OSS[3] also contains a (very) brief section on choosing a license. It's worth reading though, for other reasons.
[1]: https://people.debian.org/~dktrkranz/legal/Understanding%20O...
Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising
#26I don't like that OSI seems to somehow come away with this (at least as framed here) with control of the term. I agree just calling whatever nonsense open-source is problematic, but I don't agree it has to be one of their licenses to be open source at all .
In practice I don't think it's just OSI which gets to decide this. Debian and Red Hat have their own teams determining whether something is Open Source enough to allow into their distributions, and obviously the Free Software Foundation keeps their own list of licenses which they consider Free Software. If these groups of people disagree on whether a particular license is Free/Open Source software, it's not going to…
They have every right to dictate the meaning of the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software Read the first section.
Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising
#27so now open source is the licensing on not whether the source code is freely visible? "this unlicensed project is closed source, source code is free to browse >here<"
How is it closed source if the source is openly available to view?
There's plenty of closed source software where you can view the source. Open source just means the ability to modify, use and potentially redistribute according to the terms of the license.
Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising
#28so now open source is the licensing on not whether the source code is freely visible? "this unlicensed project is closed source, source code is free to browse >here<"
How is it closed source if the source is openly available to view?
If it's not possible for people to (legally) use that source, or to modify or redistribute it, then it's not open source, it's just shared source / source available (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software).
Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree with some of their requirements for open source licenses, and will continue to call the code that I have open sourced over the years as "open source" despite them. Their attempt to occupy the term is a little offensive. Correction: They came up with the name, so it's theirs. I'll leave my public embarrassment here.
They occupy the term because they literally coined it, if you know your history.[1] OS came to us from the OSD, written by the OSI and after hot debate in the early days of what should and shouldn't be Free Software. It was specifically a reaction to the FSF and a rejection of that group's activism, which didn't fit what they were trying to do. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software (specifically the…
They didn’t coin the term:
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/who-really-coined-the-term-op...
Re: Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising
#30> The court only confirmed what we already know – that "open source" is a term of art for software that has been licensed under a specific type of license, and whether a license is an OSI-approved license is a critically important factor in user adoption of the software.
The court confirmed no such things. The decisions expressed in these two documents regarding the use of "open source" as a description of the product in question hinge upon the fact that someone else's software was released under a new license by Defendant, who had no authority to do so.
The court did not care to define open source, except to clarify that a license used previously by the Plaintiff is an open source license, and a license used subsequently is not. The court also did not consider any license-approving practices, let alone those of the Open Source Institute, of whom I find no mention in either document used to justify OSI's claim.