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Open Source has a very clear meaning in the context of IT, understood by developers and lawyers, judges and policy makers alike: it means that the code is distributed with a license approved by the Open Source Initiative.

Open Source Initiative is not an authority here. We had this debate many many times. You may not agree with this point of view, but let's not make it as if yours is the universal one.

> Open Source Initiative is not an authority here. We had this debate many many times. You may not agree with this point of view, but let's not make it as if yours is the universal one.

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).

I’ve heard this line before and it confuses me. What is the authority?

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.

Exactly right!

But "Open Source" both as a term and idea pre-dates the OSI's formation. The general definition of "Open Source" shouldn't be universally defined by a single body.

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...

Of course it predates the formation of OSI. OSI didn’t invent the term, it’s just a group of people who formed to formalize and help adoption.

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.

> 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).

> 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.

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.

"This is the commonly accepted definition of open source and there’s very few who would consider your custom license open source."

You might think so but I disagree.

Yes, it’s a free country. That’s why we have consensus.

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.

"Source" also was a term and idea predating the first ever computer source code. Definitions can change.

This is a somewhat pedantic and useless comment. Of course definitions can change, but the notion of "open source" hasn't changed in any significant and notable fashion since it was first coined in the late 90s. Feel free to disprove me.

It’s not about the OSI. They just happen to have a convenient list that everyone agrees on.

I am pretty sure that for most developers open source = source code available, and nothing else.

Anegdotally I have been a professional dev for 10 years and this is the first time I hear your definition of open source.

That's probably because you've only been a professional developer for 10 years. Here's a quick history lesson:

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!

Love it.

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.

I'm also often an advocate of what you're saying there, "language changes..."

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.

Anecdotally, I've also been a professional dev for over 10 years, and have been involved with open source projects longer than that. And in my experience, "open source" almost always means you are free to modify and redistribute from the source (possibly with a requirement that you also release the code for your changes, in the case of the GPL). The exceptions are mostly companies that want to claim they are open source for marketing, without actually following the spirit of open source.

> for most developers open source = source code available

I'm pretty sure it's not, unless by developer you mean land developers and not software devs

What's an example of "open source" software you've used that matches that description?

Open source doesn’t mean active authority, because you have the source code doesn’t you have some level of control on the repo that the source code is being host, having Go source code doesn’t mean you have the right to just commit into the Golang repo without checks and decisions

> just commit into the Golang repo without checks and decisions

Oh, but you can, just do it in your fork. You can't claim their trademark but that's a completely different thing.

The readers may not like it, but you're not actually wrong. Go ask 100 developers if BSL or ELv2 are open source and the majority of them will say that it is -- because the source code is available, and for the majority of users, these licenses are less restrictive than AGPL. Not Open Source (tm*), but open source -- FOSS vs OSS.

(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.

That's why there a separate term for what you are describing, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software

I'm on mobile and with family today so I can't respond in-depth (happy independence day!), but have ever wondered why the term "source-available" has changed meaning, yet the term "open-source" is not 'allowed' to? (And I'd argue it already has, much to the OSI's dismay.)

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.

> 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."

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?

All my evidence is anecdotal, based on talking to my users. But that'd be a great topic for developer survey.

Also, I'm quoting Perens' definition of open source.

Why doesn't Elasticsearch B.V. refer to their software as "open source", then? They refer to it as "free and open" in their marketing, so obviously they think the idea is appealing to their customers. They refer to Logstash as "open source" and specifically to the fully Apache 2.0-licensed version as the "-oss" build.

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/

I'd assume because of pressure from OSI and friends (i.e. bad publicity), not from the real world. The same reason my company is "open, source-available."

If the common understanding of "open source" differed so much from the OSI standard, wouldn't these companies just say "open source" and dismiss the OSI definition as archaic, too narrow, etc.? Instead, it seems like there's been a lot of work put into maintaining a formal distinction, including working with Bruce Perens to revise the BSL:

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.

No, it's not just word-play. There are real restrictions coming with source-available code if you want to use it in your business operations. One of the reasons companies express so much interest in open-source is to have no obligations before the vendor (support contracts that cannot be terminated early even if the software is being removed, licensing that makes it hard to migrate from a few large machines to many smaller containers/VMs, other forms of lock-in) and take a risk of an open-source software going unmaintained (that they usually plan to mitigate by hiring an outsourcing firm to fix the abandoned OSS projects).

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.

Before this moment, I had referred to it as “transparent source” — you can look, but cannot touch.

But that's not at all what the ELv2, SSPL, or BSL licenses say. At many times, they're more permissive than GPL.

I've heard the term "source available" for that. Nowadays they also have "open core" which means you can't do shit with the source you do get. But that's another thing entirely.

You're referring to source available licenses. These range from the nearly open like Mongo or ElasticSearch to the almost totally closed like Windows or Solaris.

They're not inherently bad licenses but they aren't open source.

> Open Source only means the source code is available

No, that's "source available." If there is no open source license, then it is not open source.