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> 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 produc…
I 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 .
I haven't read the trial court ruling, but the appeals court ruling doesn't support OSI controlling the term. Rather, since both the plaintiff and the defendant agreed that AGPL + Common Cause was not a free or open source license, the court simply accepted that, and didn't have to weigh in on the matter themselves. Edit: After reading the applicable sections of the trial court ruling, it is no different - the court…
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The court decision directly declares this false. The fact that AGPL+Commons makes code source-available (the source code is publicly available) but not open-source ( https://opensource.org/osd ) is the false advertising claim in question. If you were to design a source-available nonfree product, and call it 'open source', this court would find you guilty of false advertising. Not that this should come as a surprise,…
No, that's not what the decision says. OSI is guilty of making claims that the court did not make, and they are adding needless confusion to the legal definitions of the terms "Open Source" and "Free". No court has ever ruled on a definitive meaning of "open source" that matches OSI's definition of the term. OSI is claiming that the term "open source" is what is false advertising. But both the trial and appellate cou…
If that statement is wrong, then 'open source just means source-available' is also wrong, for the same reasons. People who release OSI 'open source' software call it open source, people like GitHub who talk about licenses use OSI's definition, and people who release closed-source-available software clarify that it's not 'open source', using those words. The only people who treat 'open source' as meaning 'source available' are people who say 'free software' and want you to too.
And when you say 'free and open-source', the 'free' in that phrase does mean $0 - you wouldn't need 'open-source' if free meant FSF 'free' and open-source meant source-available, because FSF 'free' software requires source availability, so 'and open source' would be redundant.
Therefore you can either interpret FOSS as meaning $0 and source-available, or $0 and OSI 'open source'. The former would not have been false advertising, as it is in fact $0 and source-available. Therefore the interpretation the court is going with almost certainly involves OSI 'open source'.
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> Open source simply refers to the fact that the source code is publicly available. That's "source available". "Open Source" is widely understood to mean a bunch more, captured in the "Open Source Definition": https://opensource.org/osd
No court has as yet ruled that the OSI definition of "open source" is the legal definition of the term. The ruling here does not either. If it had limited its ruling to the term "open source," then this would indeed begin to codify what "open source" means from a legal standpoint. However, the courts ruled upon the composite term "open source and free". Under the OSI definition, open source implies free. But no court…
There are also a handful of orgs (most prominently a few VC-funded companies) who want to freeload on the goodwill of "Open Source" to market their proprietary software. And there are some Free Software advocates who dislike the very term "Open Source". (Not that "Free Software" has court-endorsed clarity either.)
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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.
But the quote also says it's unlicensed.
"distributed unlicensed software (not in the public domain) is fully copyright protected, and therefore legally unusable... Examples of this are unauthorized software leaks or software projects which are placed on public software repositories like GitHub without a specified license" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license#Software_lice...
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"If you were to design a source-available nonfree product, and call it 'open source', this court would find you guilty of false advertising." It's not really about any of that. If you read the court opinion, it's basically copyright protection infringement on the basis that someone copied a product and changed the licensing in violation of the original license. The false advertising claim is on the basis that the dup…
The original license is AGPL with an added non-commercial clause. To say 'the original license forbade that', where 'that' is being FOSS, is to either agree with me, or to claim that the court is instead offering opinion on what constitutes 'free', which is five times as loaded as 'open source'.
> 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 produc…
Because both parties agree that AGPL + Common Clause can't be classified as "free and open" the court can decide if ONgDB is "free and open" by determining if it's licensed under AGPL + Common Clause. The court doesn't have to have an opinion on what "free and open" means, because the involved parties are already in agreement.
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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.
But the quote also says it's unlicensed.
A bunch of people here are conflating the concepts of "free software" and "open source". these are not the same. "Free" (as in speech, or beer) software is governed by the license it is published under. Open source simply refers to the fact that the source code is publicly available. Open source is a prerequisite for truly free (as in speech) software, but the opposite is not.
> Open source simply refers to the fact that the source code is publicly available. That's "source available". "Open Source" is widely understood to mean a bunch more, captured in the "Open Source Definition": https://opensource.org/osd
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> Open source simply refers to the fact that the source code is publicly available. That's "source available". "Open Source" is widely understood to mean a bunch more, captured in the "Open Source Definition": https://opensource.org/osd
"Open source" is not a legal trademark of OSI. The idea that "open source" means what OSI says it means is purely an opinion.
A few companies have tried it and backed off.