Open source is not about you (2018)

Re:Open source is not about you (2018) by ynniv on Saturday July 02, 2022 @01:40PM (#31960897)

Perhaps this is a hot take, but Rich's headline is wrong. His argument hinges on the idea that software chooses to be open source out of altruism: someone created something of value, and rather than requiring payment they gifted it to the world. But if you have ever been at an organization that makes open source software, there is always a calculation that at least suggests that the company is better served by using an open source license. Part of that calculation is people filing bug reports, proposing improvements, and in general being satisfied with the library. Some requests are too niche, and some arguments too baseless, but if the people using open source don't participate at all we often say that something isn't really open source at all (see Apple's "Public Source"). When that happens, people tend to make forks, build competing libraries, or give up and move on.

Open Source isn't all about you, but it is a little bit about you.

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Re:Open source is not about you (2018) by bdefore on Saturday July 02, 2022 @03:32PM (#31961660)

> but if the people using open source don't participate at all we often say that something isn't really open source at all

i cannot say who the 'we' is, but i suspect in some circles this may hold true. i do challenge that this is a reasonably held belief because it is an expansion of the historical responsibilities generally held towards those who would wish to open up their source for others. it may even suppress how much code is openly shared (since most engineers don't enjoy being community managers)

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Re:Open source is not about you (2018) by ynniv on Saturday July 02, 2022 @06:15PM (#31962926)

It's an old debate, and I'm not familiar with the current usage.

   Stallman explains: "The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement."

Clojure is Open Source by this definition, since it is developed by a collective group, as opposed to a permissibly licensed but static artifact. People are welcome to run their projects however they like, but the entitlement comes from the philosophy that Open Source is more than a contract, and is better when there is participation. Labels matter because they set expectations – Apple does not call their Public Source "Open Source", and people don't complain because they understand the difference.

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Re:Open source is not about you (2018) by bdefore on Sunday July 03, 2022 @08:47AM (#31967299)

Agreed that the labels matter and some of them are slippery. Some are made slippery with cavalier intent by influential people, either by redefining or hitching their movement's cart to a better known thing. Stallman and others want to expand open source to be more than what the license says. I am proud of the achievements of that movement, but I regret that muddying labels leads to dilution and confusion.

Apple recognizes the state of this confusion and perhaps wisely uses a different definition to avoid conflict. The Clojure maintainers do not, because they interpret Open Source by its original definition. Just because a collective group is involved does not mean its maintainers are compelled to the responsibilities conveyed by Stallman et al's extension of what open source is.

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