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.
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.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
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.