It's no wonder, that the usage of OSS version was pretty low, when few were able to build it and even if they managed that, the resulting application was broken every few releases.
Both VS Code and Chromium are easy to build, due to their nature and popularity, they are available prebuilt from many sources. I would install "unofficial" Chromium build from my distribution's repository, I wouldn't keep my code in unofficial Sourcegraph build from some random person on Github. Comparing them is rather unfair, but there's another issue that stopped OSS adoption.
For a long time, official Sourcegraph Docker image came with a 10 seat free license, which suited many people and they weren't looking for alternatives like OSS build.
I would argue that announcing license change and closing of your product as a small block in change log file or when someone mentions the problem in Github Issues is not adequate for such a change.
Not using open-first principles, restricting the product by using enterprise only plugins, which others mentioned under this post, not providing open source builds and changing license without preceding announcement, while previously using open source terminology for some feel-good free marketing leaves a bitter taste. Especially with so many companies doing this right now due to interest rates.
https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/43231 https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/43203 https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/6790 https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/6783
[1]: https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/discussions/54589
Are you sure this isn’t just a way for you to crack down on license abuse?
Quick search reveals
https://github.com/sourcegraph?q=Lsp&type=all&language=&sort...
One of their employees maintains a Zig LSP https://youtu.be/h_7o3yroYy4
(I Don like the news itself obviously but the delivery was good)
Stop using the term Open Source. It's not open source if you apply restrictions like this, it's pretty easy to see that you're being disingenuous. These licenses are not OSI approved.
It practically is, and they've done a good job of gathering the relevant citations to make that point.
https://opensource.org/authority/
If you're passionately against this, feel free to make the relevant edit here as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software#Definitio... (but you may have to have a litany of citations to justify why the OSI definition is not a de facto standard if you want it to stick).
It seems to me that it’s OSI (around for years, reputable, etc) vs some for profit companies misusing common terminology in the, I think false, sense that people think non-open things they call open are good. Not sure if they are deluded or just wrong.
Happy to talk about some new authority for open source licenses, but it seems like the “OSI isn’t an authority, nobody is” is an argument by 8th graders who just read the Wikipedia article on communism.
OSI formed to help open source developers and users to better understand “proper” licenses from bullshit.
The OSI has done a great job at introducing a legally ratified and globally recognized license format to help reduce uncertainty, but it is not, and has on several occasions been denied[0], the global authority on the definition of Open Source. They have a trademark and are the authority for "Open Source Initiative Approved License" (ie: "OSI License") specifically.
[0]: https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
It’s not like there’s some competing definition. OSI has been around for 20+ years and only recently did a few companies decide they want a different definition so they can make more money.
But the issue isn’t that there’s some word police. The issue is that open source has a definition in use and when people try to overload, it gets confusing. I wish people wouldn’t do that, but it’s free country (free as in speech, not free as in beer).
No one cares if source is “open” in that people can view it. In that case windows is “open.” The important part of open is the ability to change, reuse, and participate.
Why would anyone care if source is visible but not usable? I’ve been able to decompile forever. I can see the source if I need to. The community and reuse aspect is important.
Finally, OSI doesn’t define the term. They just certify licenses that adhere to open source principles and ideas. The community defines the term. Everyone is free to make up new licenses. OSI just helps the community filter out noise by reviewing licenses that actually are open source.
This is exactly my point, the community defines the term. The OSI definition does a good job of making the legal aspect of (their vision for) "open source" explicit, but it also adds additional definitions beyond what the average layperson might consider "Open Source".
Take section 5 and 6 of the "Open Source Definition"[0]. It states you can't discriminate against "persons, groups, fields, or endeavors". So if I wrote some software, put a MIT license on it, with a single additional clause that says the CIA can not use this software. Magically, it is no longer "Open Source" according to the OSI, even though 99.9999% of people can freely use it under the MIT.
[0]: https://opensource.org/osd
They have a definition, they even have a pretty good definition, but the OSI shouldn't be the definition. All OSI licenses are open source licenses, but not all open source licenses are OSI licenses. (All thumbs are fingers, not all fingers are thumbs).
Right, because it’s not open source and not MIT. Open source isn’t about 99.999% of people being able to use it, it’s about be free and open.
This is the commonly accepted definition of open source and there’s very few who would consider your custom license open source.
Practically speaking, it means I can’t use it even though I’m not in the CIA because I want my project to be compatible and reusable down the line by anyone. So I use a true OSI license like MIT and want all the software I link to and use compatible so users have a clear expectation.
You can make your new license, but I don’t want to use it as I only want to use open source licenses.
I don’t want to hire an attorney to review your license and see if it works or not. I want to just filter by known licenses and make sure they are compatible with my other licenses.
There are open source licenses that aren’t OSI, but they are pretty few and OSI works diligently to review new licenses and add them.
Your example license isn’t open source though, so it doesn’t fit this small group.
You might think so but I disagree.
1000 people misusing the term means the term changes. 1 person misusing the term is just a jerk.
I’m always suspicious when people overloading a term are all doing it for personal benefit (ie, promoting their product).
I think consensus is around OSI now, but it could change. I might not be right in the future, but I think I’m right now.
Anegdotally I have been a professional dev for 10 years and this is the first time I hear your definition of open source.
If we go back, say, 25 years, when the term Open Source entered common usage, it was a way of describing the things that had thusfar been labeled "free software", but as a way of deemphasizing the notion of the Free Software movement that saw non-free-software as immoral. It was a term to describe things that met the Free Software Definition, but without harping on morality.
It was very much a counter-culture (it was, after all, the Free Software movement and the Open Source movement), and very much not a generic term for having access to the source. That was already super common in enterprise agreements, and nobody considered that to be open source.
Then around the early 2000s, Linux became hot shit, and some large companies wanted to avail themselves to the rising tide and began labeling their watered down versions of "source available" things as open source in an attempt to jump on the bandwagon. But that was an intentional attempt to water down the definition everyone already understood for marketing reasons.
You not knowing this history means that to some extent the marketing worked. But just realize that in arguing here, you're participating in the astroturfing. Also, get off my lawn!
But I’m also in the camp that didn’t know this history and had a softer definition of “open source”. That’s just how language changes, shrug.
But this I think is one of those cases where there is a difference, because it's also descriptive of a community, and it matters how that community sees itself. With whatever definition of open source you have, the most high traction stuff that we all rely on (I originally wrote, "most", but I think e.g. the Linux kernel matters more than a random abandoned repo on Github) is produced by people that use that older definition of open source, and mostly by people who identify with that social movement. (I for a long time was one of those people.) In this case I do believe that in that all of us now rely on open source software, that redefining it in opposition to the group of people who produce that thing is less than respectful.
I'm pretty sure it's not, unless by developer you mean land developers and not software devs
Oh, but you can, just do it in your fork. You can't claim their trademark but that's a completely different thing.
(I do understand that Solargraph is now using a proprietary enterprise license, so this comment is directed at the OP mentioning "OSI approved" licenses, not at Solargraph's new license.)
* it ain't trademarked.
The term source-available has been shoehorned to mean everything-not-OSI-approved, instead of what it used to mean: a proprietary license for a project that has its source available (e.g. Sourcegraph's license).
In reality, "open source is a broad software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent restrictions on the use and modification of the code." Which is the definition the majority of developers would say is open source.
The ELv2 and most uses of BSL fall under the "relaxed restrictions" on use and modification, similar to GPL. I'd argue they are open source.
Not to the general public, only to the users doesn't have to be generally available to the public, see recent RHEL PR debacle. It's not about the restrictions it's about what you are allowed to do with the code.
> ... Which is the definition the majority of developers would say is open source.
Can you prove your claim has anyone done demographics on this?
Also, I'm quoting Perens' definition of open source.
Users of the BSL refer to it as a "source-available" license that, after a period of time, converts into an "open source" license:
https://www.couchbase.com/blog/couchbase-adopts-bsl-license/
https://itsfoss.com/making-the-business-source-license-open-...
Note that I'm not coming from a position of hostility re: the BSL and similar licenses here. I think companies using that approach can be friendly neighbors with the open source community. I just think it's important for those neighbors to share a well-maintained fence to keep malicious actors from exploiting ambiguity.
Now, that is one of the main reasons why non-OSS licenses are being adopted: many companies prepare contingencies in case an OSS project dies, instead of making some arrangements to help a bit to ensure the project doesn't die. However right the vendors are, the resulting license significantly (materially, non-word-playfully) restricts the users, which is exactly why those users are compelled to start paying for the product.
P.S. None of what I wrote means I oppose those licenses, as they may be needed to ensure a healthy ecosystem. But I oppose calling them OSS.
They're not inherently bad licenses but they aren't open source.
No, that's "source available." If there is no open source license, then it is not open source.
But we're not talking about technicalities here. We're talking about the vey basic idea of what it means to be "open source." I'm not telling anyone that they can't use words however they want. They can. But the way they're using the term "open source" is just fundamentally incompatible with how the vast majority of people in the field use it. So it's at the very least going to cause some confusion to use the term "open source" in the way they are.
Besides, I think people have a bigger problem with the licensing change itself than any wordsmithery.
It sounds like we are in full agreement, and you’re with me that @xenago’s demand to not use the phrase might be overstepping a little bit, no? Isn’t this confusion easier to clear up with a single short question than with assumptions or demands?
There is a slight problem with claiming using “open source” is confusing to the people who know about OSI. To the lay person who’s not a software developer, “open source” does mean ‘source is visible’, and “free software” does mean ‘software that costs no money’ (and these definitions are included in dictionaries and Wikipedia, next to the OSI and FSF versions). The OSI and FSF definitions are terms of art that these orgs are trying to establish and control, and they deviate from what the literal words alone imply, both in meaning and level of specificity, therefore they will always be confusing to people who are neither developers nor lawyers. Wouldn’t it be better if FSF and OSI relied not on co-opting everyday words, but having phrases that are more obviously terms of art and more obviously attached to the orgs? Even something as simple as “OSI Open Source” or “FSF Free Software” would go a long way. OSI does on it’s site use “OSD - Open Source Definition” quite a bit.
Source available is the correct term. Laymen who don't know any better often call shareware open source as well; they don't know how the software is made and don't care. That is not a good reason to use incorrect words.
The whole point is that they are trying to use the words "open source" to appeal specifically to people, like those here in this thread, who work on free and open source software in the FSF/OSI sense.
This is a message for the exact group of people who use the term of art because they're practitioners of that art.
Oh okay. I was trying to tell you I agreed with what you said, but if you insist: Okay, fine then I disagree with you. Naw, I still agree with what you said. I don’t know what you’re disagreeing with at all, you haven’t made that clear. Consider the possibility that we might be, as the phrase goes, agreeing violently.
> they are trying to use the words “open source” to appeal specifically to people
Who is “they”? The top comment was referring to Apache 2.0, which is an OSI approved license. So, what, exactly, are you thrashing against here?
> This is a message for the exact group of people who use the term of art because they’re practitioners of that art.
Sorry for saying this again, but I agree with that sentence. My point, which does not disagree with what you just said, is that the people who know and use the term of art know better and should be the least likely to be confused when someone doesn’t use their term of art, and most likely to be able to handle the disambiguating gracefully like adults without getting upset or whinging that their term of art wasn’t used. They should be the people who best understand that their term of art has a special and overloaded meaning next to the literal words and some common non-term-of-art usage of those words.
This is all academic, the top comment was using the term of art in all of it’s overloaded glory. All I’m saying is that @xenago’s response is a bit inappropriate no matter what, regardless of whether it was the term-of-art usage or the lay-person usage, and what you said appeared to agree with that, because you said “I’m not telling anyone that they can’t use words however they want”. So it does in fact continue to sound like you and I are agreeing on this point, among others.
I'm no fan of the OSI, but language policing usually turns out to be correct. There are other definitions of open source - the free software definition, the DFSG - but in practice they're all close enough that the differences don't matter.
> OSI didn’t invent the term open source, and like it or not, other definitions do exist that don’t meet OSI’s standards.
Very few. I don't think there's any nontrivial software that doesn't meet the OSI's standards but is recognised as open-source by anyone who isn't a) a paid shill or b) a self-important provocateur who wrote it.
> I don’t understand the confrontational stance either, with code being offered to individuals. That far exceeds what most companies do, in terms of serving the open source community, no?
Companies are trying to salami-slice away the rights users expect from open-source software. The response to that has to be a firm line in the sand.
> other definitions do exist that don’t meet OSI’s standards. The term doesn’t belong to any one organization.
And all attempts to redefine what open source means fail, because both FOSS camps OSI and FSF/GNU as well as everyone in between see it for what it is: attempts to muddy the water in order to deceive users and customers. Your software is either FOSS or it's not, there is no scale here, it's a social contract. Just because there are a bunch of ambiguous licenses that no-one knows what to make of, doesn't mean there are two or more concepts. There's only one concept for both "open source" and "free software" and the difference is philosophical.
> There’s only one concept for both “open source” and “free software”
Well neither OSI nor FSF agree with this statement. You’re on your own there.
'Open source' generally gets read to mean 'available under an OSI or OSI-like license', and 'free software' as 'available under the GPL or a GPL-like license' IME - if the license is commercial only but the code's still freely -readable- albeit not freely -runnable- then 'source available' is clearer.
(note that sqs clarifies elsewhere in the thread that 'open source' was being used to refer to the stuff that's (still) Apache 2 licensed, not the source available parts)
Free software is largely coterminous with open source. Even Stallman uses the term 'copylefted software' to refer to software under a so-called copyleft license -- one which, like the GPL, forbids license changes upon redistribution. Stallman will tell you that he'd rather your free software be copylefted, but it doesn't have to be.
You're right about source-available though. It's what we used to call 'shared source', after a failed attempt by Microsoft to promote that as an alternative to the viral, cancer-like open source.
docker run --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway --publish 7080:7080 --publish 127.0.0.1:3370:3370 --rm --volume ~/.sourcegraph/config:/etc/sourcegraph --volume ~/.sourcegraph/data:/var/opt/sourcegraph sourcegraph/server:5.1.2
docker run --rm=true --publish 3434:3434 --volume $PWD:/data/repos:ro sourcegraph/src-cli:latest serve-git /data/reposThe challenge I had with Sourcegraph is that it's out of reach of developers working on personal projects. There isn't a hosted plan, and for my projects I can't easily open source them due to my employer.
I was really excited when the Sourcegraph App was released, since it allowed me to give Sourcegraph a try on my project without going through the complex self-hosted setup. I went as far as getting scip-clang working with my Bazel-based project, and then tried out the docker-compose setup on my home lab.
Now that code search was removed from the app, and this change, I'm concerned that I won't be able to use Sourcegraph for my personal projects in the future.
This is a missed opportunity. I think individual developers using products for personal projects are powerful advocates, since those developers may convince their employer to purchase the product. If I could I'd gladly pay, but I'm just one person and can't justify $5k/year.
We have lots to reflect on given the feedback here on HN. We were honestly a bit blindsided by the number of people who appear to be using open source Sourcegraph, or who really wanted to use it but found the process too difficult. Part of this is because we had a zero telemetry policy for the open source distribution. Perhaps that was a mistake in hindsight, but introducing telemetry there would've been another can of worms!
Now that the usage is more visible, it's actually kicked off a lively internal discussion. We're going to take some time to gauge the size of the user community and figure how we can best support it. Aside from individual use being free (still the case) and making deployment more straightforward (through something like code search in App), are there other things we can do to make it easier to adopt? Sorry about the confusion here, we should have handled this better. But the silver lining is we realized there were a lot of users of Sourcegraph that we didn't know about and we're now discussing how best to engage and support you all. I do hope you'll take the chance to pop into our Discord and say hello and continue with feedback that can help us make the best decisions for our users.
I like paying for things that I use and bring me value, but at the moment Sourcegraph is a hard sell due to high cost compared to small company size and being based outside of Western Europe and US.
I really wish the enterprise stuff was available to the single user case like mine. Everything past v4.3.1 is hot garbage, as you guys really nerfed it since you removed "showEnterpriseHomePanels" among a few other things. I regrettably can't upgrade to anything newer because of that.
I would LOVE to have the ability to pay you guys say, $100 a year or something reasonable for just a private onsite enterprise license for one person -- myself. I continue to advocate for your products in all the enterprise contracts I work as that's what I'm most familiar with and tinker with when I work on my own personal stuff on my own free time.
I think it would be great to just have all those features for one user, and for a reasonable yearly fee for a single developer to be able to afford.
If you guys are concerned about being ripped off -- For example, some company buying this "single user enterprise license", I don't think they would if you limit it to one admin user. No company is going to risk sharing creds for a superuser account / keys to the kingdom, and if they do, they are some fly-by-night company with no sense of security that was never going to give you guys money anyway.
That's my two cents.
tl;dr: I can care less if it's open source or not. I just care that enterprise is affordable to the home user and that I can still run it on premise and in a semi-airgapped network environment.
From my prior code inspection, I recall seeing OSS code making regular “pings” back to Sourcegraph even when telemetry options are disabled by users. Survey toasts also appear to send information to HubSpot when answered.
I don't doubt that your perception of the OSS version's lack of success is accurate, and it is definitely easier to close off the source, but at the same time the outcome of this is that one funnel into it is closing with the calculation that the effort spent to keep that funnel open wasn't worth the people coming in through it.
The other possibility, and one that I subscribe to (not that it isn't self-serving) is that the funnel was never open enough to see success in the first place.
[0]: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/g...
The response was basically "sorry, we're too busy".
Your business model is fascinating.
Our licensing principle remains to charge companies while making tools for individual devs open source. Very few individual devs (or companies) used the limited-feature open-source variant of code search, so we decided to remove it. Usage of Sourcegraph code search was even more skewed toward our official non-OSS build than in other similar situations like Google Chrome vs. Chromium or VS Code vs. VSCodium. Maintaining 2 variants was a burden on our engineering team that had very little benefit for anyone.
You can see more explanation at https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/53528#issu.... The change was announced in the changelog and in a PR (all of our development occurs in public), and we will have a blog post this week after we separate our big monorepo into 2 repos as planned: the 100% OSS repo for Cody and the non-OSS repo for code search.
You can still use Sourcegraph code search for free on public code at https://sourcegraph.com and on our self-hosted free tier on private code (which means individual devs can still run Sourcegraph code search 100% for free). Customers are not affected at all.