It really doesn’t mean that. Neither Stallman’s four freedoms[1] nor Peren’s Open Source Definition[2] have anything to say about code history, bug trackers, development standards etc etc, and they’re the only commonly accepted definitions for what free and open source software is.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en

[2] https://opensource.org/docs/osd

> The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

> In order for freedoms 1 and 3 (the freedom to make changes and the freedom to publish the changed versions) to be meaningful, you need to have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software. Obfuscated “source code” is not real source code and does not count as source code.

IMO exactly the same logic applies to code history and bug trackers: you need access to those things to be able to study how the program works. A code dump is much the same thing as obfuscated source code: you can build the program from it, but you can't understand the program from it.

Right, but, like, that’s just your opinion man.

FOSS means you get the source code, everything else is gravy.

Source "in the preferred form for making modifications". IMO that means a VCS checkout rather than a code dump.

A code dump is nothing remotely like obfuscated source code. They run competitions for obfuscated source code, take a look and compare.

Seriously, at this point I think you have to be just defending a position that you know is wrong but since you originally stated it, you’re not backing down. If not then let’s just agree to disagree...