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Open source does not imply open community

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Re: Open source does not imply open community

#51

Post by ranger_danger »

saagarjha wrote: post #46
Levitz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Better faith CoC people talk about freedom of association vs freedom of speech - if a platform doesn't like their oppponents, isn't it fine to ban them? Sure, but the problem here is far more insidious. By latching into delicate and, at times, controversial issues, CoC may hold a project hostage and threaten character assassination. Imagine that for some bizarre reason, CoC establishes that issues are only to be tal…

And your argument is that the CoC that does the Monday thing is better, or what?

I think they're saying CoCs are being weaponized to enable arbitrary enforcement/discipline using subjective terminology (which I have noticed as well), and that that's a bad thing.

I have also noticed a stark hypocrisy where the moderators do exactly what their own rules say not to do, and they get away with it, but their users don't.

It's like they're just using the CoC to suppress opinions they don't like.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#52

Post by ranger_danger »

locknitpicker wrote: post #35
GaryBluto wrote: post #33

> No "community". No politics. No Code of Conduct. No pull requests or issues. No wiki. No core team. Sounds like paradise. I feel there are too many "communities" these days that exist to the detriment to the project at hand. I'd even go as far to say that I cannot think of a single time a "community" has aided an open source project in any way.

> Sounds like paradise. It sounds like paradise if you are not open to accepting any contribution or even feedback to fix even egregious problems with the project. That's fine if your goal is to maximize control at the expense of quality. But for that I wonder if FLOSS is what you are actually looking for.

I think this is exactly what the article is about though... open source does not imply open community.

For many, I have noticed that they only post the source of their projects in case it's useful to others, but that ultimately they are only writing it for themselves and aren't interested in building a community around it, or trying to make it more "quality."

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#54

Post by cassianoleal »

grahamlee wrote: post #48
_ZeD_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> To be more specific, Open Source only promises the four fundamental freedoms ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition ). no, that is FSF's free software. I'm sick of coming here and see "open source" as something with "moral values" - stealing it from the free software with "the magic" of conflating the two concepts. Open source is just big software companies stealing from innumerable voluntee…

If you look at the Open Source Definition, you see the four freedoms: https://opensource.org/osd That’s unsurprising because the OSD is based on the Debian social contract, and Debian is a GNU distribution.

I'd invite you to read It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again [0] by one of the authors of both the DFSG and co-founder of the OSI.

[0] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/02/msg01641.html

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#55

Post by engeljohnb »

_ZeD_ wrote: post #26
mitchellh wrote: post #8

Yep! To be more specific, Open Source only promises the four fundamental freedoms ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition ). It promises literally NOTHING else, including zero cost. Free and open source software can and should cost money! (The "free" in "free and open source" is not about money, people!) I'm actually very enthusiastic about these OSS "supply chain" attacks that have been happenin…

>>> To be more specific, Open Source only promises the four fundamental freedoms ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition ). no, that is FSF's free software. I'm sick of coming here and see "open source" as something with "moral values" - stealing it from the free software with "the magic" of conflating the two concepts. Open source is just big software companies stealing from innumerable voluntee…

> Open source is just big software companies stealing from innumerable volunteers

Whether you think this is true or not, MIT and BSD licenses still guarantee the four freedoms.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#56

Post by engeljohnb »

JimDabell wrote: post #25

Open source is not merely a license choice. It is a reformulation of free software to make it more attractive to businesses. The entire point behind open source is that it is more effective for businesses to develop software collaboratively with the public than it is to do it in private. So yes, open source does imply open community. If you want to dump code onto the public with a permissive license but not develop t…

Why is everyone in this thread ignoring the fact that the world already had this debate 30 years ago, so the OSI published a document clearly specifying what is and isn't Open Source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition

It doesn't say anything about collaborative development.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#57

Post by JimDabell »

engeljohnb wrote: post #56
JimDabell wrote: post #25

Open source is not merely a license choice. It is a reformulation of free software to make it more attractive to businesses. The entire point behind open source is that it is more effective for businesses to develop software collaboratively with the public than it is to do it in private. So yes, open source does imply open community. If you want to dump code onto the public with a permissive license but not develop t…

Why is everyone in this thread ignoring the fact that the world already had this debate 30 years ago, so the OSI published a document clearly specifying what is and isn't Open Source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition It doesn't say anything about collaborative development.

I’m well aware of the OSD, but we are talking about social norms, not distribution terms.

Direct from the OSI:

> The conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also believed that it would be useful to have a single label that identified this approach and distinguished it from the philosophically- and politically-focused label “free software.” Brainstorming for this new label eventually converged on the term “open source”, originally suggested by Christine Peterson.

— https://opensource.org/about/history-of-the-open-source-init...

“Participating in an engaged community” has been an intrinsic part of Open Source from the beginning.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#58

Post by engeljohnb »

JimDabell wrote: post #57
engeljohnb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is everyone in this thread ignoring the fact that the world already had this debate 30 years ago, so the OSI published a document clearly specifying what is and isn't Open Source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition It doesn't say anything about collaborative development.

I’m well aware of the OSD, but we are talking about social norms, not distribution terms. Direct from the OSI: > The conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also b…

It's so fundamental they didn't include it in the definition?

>Open source is not merely a license choice.

Yes it is. The OSD only deals with licenses, therefore whether a software has a "community" has no bearing on whether it's open source.

You're claiming the terms laid out in the OSD were motivated by hopes of cultivating a community, but the reasons behind the document are immaterial to this discussion. It only matters how "open source" is defined, and it's plainly not defined by the presence of any community.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#59

Post by rpdillon »

JimDabell wrote: post #57
engeljohnb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is everyone in this thread ignoring the fact that the world already had this debate 30 years ago, so the OSI published a document clearly specifying what is and isn't Open Source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition It doesn't say anything about collaborative development.

I’m well aware of the OSD, but we are talking about social norms, not distribution terms. Direct from the OSI: > The conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also b…

I talked to Simon Phipps about this back in the mid-2000s, so I understand where you're coming from, even if I disagree.

I'm curious whether you classify chromium, AOSP, or sqlite as open source.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#60

Post by JimDabell »

engeljohnb wrote: post #58
JimDabell wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m well aware of the OSD, but we are talking about social norms, not distribution terms. Direct from the OSI: > The conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also b…

It's so fundamental they didn't include it in the definition? >Open source is not merely a license choice. Yes it is. The OSD only deals with licenses, therefore whether a software has a "community" has no bearing on whether it's open source. You're claiming the terms laid out in the OSD were motivated by hopes of cultivating a community, but the reasons behind the document are immaterial to this discussion. It only…

> You're claiming the terms laid out in the OSD were motivated by hopes of cultivating a community

I didn’t say that. I didn’t bring up the OSD at all. In fact I was explicitly talking about a broader concept than simply license terms from my very first sentence. You were the one that started talking about the OSD.

> It only matters how "open source" is defined, and it's plainly not defined by the presence of any community.

The OSD defines criteria by which software licenses can be considered open source. It doesn’t define the movement as a whole.

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