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>Different words for different things is good, in my opinion. And yet people are fighting tooth and nail to redefine open source to mean OSI approved licence i
by konjin 6y ago
>Different words for different things is good, in my opinion.
And yet people are fighting tooth and nail to redefine open source to mean OSI approved licence instead of using OSI approved license to mean OSI approved license.
>To see why just change the thread title: What’s up with these new non-OSI approved licenses?
It's an article that you can have a reasonable debate about without stacking the deck against the people you're arguing against. Which is why the people who make money by stacking the deck are so dead set to redefine the word to mean exactly what makes them the most money.
- davidw 6y ago"Open source" and "free software" have always been mostly interchangeable and have since their inception not simply meant "source available". The people trying to redefine anything are those ignorant of the history here.
- konjin 6y ago>"Open source" and "free software" have always been mostly interchangeable and have since their inception not simply meant "source available". Free software was coined in the 80s. I wasn't there for that. Open source was coined in the 90s because we didn't want people to think that software which let you see the code was free of charge. Then when they sold out a bunch of tech bros from SV decided that they knew best and redefined open source to mean whatever made their valuations go to the moon. The plan did work as expected because dot com crash. The people around the OSI have always been share croppers that have been trying to get paid for other peoples work.
- gowld 6y agoWriting "tech bro" and "sharecropper" makes it easy for people to stop trying to look for meaning in your writing. Also, while I'm sure it's unintentional, your backwards of "sharecropper" smells racist.(It actually means paying someone for the right to do you your own work, and was an attempted to recreate slavery after slavery was banned in USA).
- konjin 6y agoWriting "racist" makes it easy for people to stop trying to look for meaning in your writing.
- Thorrez 6y ago> redefined open source to mean whatever made their valuations go to the moon Was it redefined? My impression is that it has always effectively been a synonym for free software, just not carrying the political leanings.
- davidw 6y agoThis is correct. 'Open Source' was a way to make it more palatable to business, but the definition was pretty much identical.
- galaxyLogic 6y agoI think you are right "OSI approved license" is a much more precise term than "Open Source". If OSI wanted to provide the official definition for what is "open source" and what is not, they could have perhaps trade-marked their term "Open Source". But "OSI approved license" has its own vagueness about it. What does it mean that OSI "approves" a license? Approves it for what? To be called "Open Source"? But then unless they have the trademark for the term Open Source, they shouldn't be the one to give approvals for people to call their software that. This reminds me of the debates about whether something is true Agile, or merely wannabe-Agile. Words are just words. It is good to have precise definitions but those can be specific to a given context. It is a bit like let x = y + z. Is that the correct definition of x? No, but it is a VALID definition of it, assuming y and z are well-defined as well.
- Splizard 6y agoThey do have the trademark for the term Open Source.
- lomereiter 6y agoNope, only for "Open Source Initiative" and "Open Source Initiative Approved License", according to https://writing.kemitchell.com/2020/05/11/Open-Source-Property.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2020/05/11/Open-Source-Proper...