> As for whether SQLite is open source, well, the only reason a public domain dedication doesn’t meet the OSD is that it’s not a license. It’s more open.
That's true and I do acknowledge this in the post:
> Instead, SQLite is in the public domain, which means it has even fewer restrictions than any open source license.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
[2] https://opensource.org/blog/public-domain-is-not-open-source
I once had to go to lawyers to get a license approved on a lib that went something along the lines of "this work is in the public domain; do whatever the fuck you want with it, just don't come crawling to me for help". I'm paraphrasing from ~20-year-old memories here, but I do distinctly remember the profanity. It elicited a chuckle from the lawyer and something along the lines of "I wish all of these were this simple".
IBM wanted to use it but their lawyers balked at the added restriction. They wrote to the author to see if it could be removed. The author wrote back with, “I give permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil.”
"DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE"
And legal departments don't really like the "but, like, what's the chance they actually use us?" argument.
Your idea is like saying "Google" can be a trademark owned by Alphabet but "google" is just a verb. It seems like a cute linguistic hack but won't be meaningful in the public discourse.
In speech I clarify if and when needed, naturally.
> Your idea is like saying "Google" can be a trademark owned by Alphabet but "google" is just a verb. It seems like a cute linguistic hack but won't be meaningful in the public discourse.
You have it exactly backwards. Descriptively "to google" is a verb.
Descriptivism is much better than prescriptivism in natural language. Sure, we need to use prescriptivism when teaching the language, but we do get to evolve the language. That's just how it goes and has gone for the entire recorded history of mankind.
Neither is pronouncing a capital letter, whatever that means. It's why people have to say things like "capital P Political".
Public domain is largely a US government concept, I think the was the main reason that sqlite was put "in the public domain" it started and was initially payed for as an internal database for some military contract. So when Dr. H wanted to release it to the public he did it in the normal US government method which was public domain.
Would you legally be able to use nasa papers or programs? these are also in the public domain.
A short essay on public domain, because I am feeling a bit philosophic this morning.
As far as I know public domain is a concept that originated in the US when it was a new country(probably wrong and US centric). The question was who owns works created by a government "of the people", the answer was "the people" so it was formalized that US government works were not protected by copyright[note 1] and were in the "public domain" at first this was just laws, and when government research organizations(nasa etc..) were founded their works, the research they did, was also "public domain"
It really is an open question whether private citizens can also declaim any copyright on a work, declare it "for the public good" and put it in the public domain. Are you allowed to give up your rights?
1. The US government is able to protect it's works through mechanisms other than copyright, think classification levels. top secret etc..
As for NASA papers and such... I have no idea. If I were running a company I'd be able to ask a lawyer; as it stands, I'm taking the risk that the SQLite authors don't sue.
Similar to physical property: being able to sell it or to give it to the public is an important right. (Okay, you probably can't give your American land to everyone in the world, but only for practical reasons, and not for some fundamental reason like that would be "giving away your rights". No, that would be the opposite: your land, you do whatever you want with it.)
We're allowed to use public domain works, but we cannot declaim the work. Your copyright has a fixed term, which outlives you. Fin. You cannot surrender a right - as that has caused abuse issues in the past.
No right can be surrendered, but some may be suspended temporarily by a narrow set of laws I wish was even narrower.
Unfortunately... This does mean we can't work on Public Domain projects (legally), as we keep our copyright to our changes. Though practically, that has only been contested once in the history of the nation. The intent of the individual tends to be respected by our Common Law system.
i.e. PD is a signal the creator wants a free and boundless reuse of the product, even if it isn't strictly in the public domain.
However, on the face of it I have no right to use the software without buying a license.
The only part of the US public domain that won't fly in many countries is the waiver of moral rights (mainly the right to attribution). Since my country does not allow this waiver, the authors might be able to sue me in my jurisdiction if I started claiming to be the author of the code, which would have been ok in the US. But the voluntary non-exclusive transfer of usage, modification and distribution rights is surely allowed in every jurisdiction, so there is no reason that that part of the dedication would not be valid.
And if there exists a jurisdiction where the transfer of material rights isn't allowed at all, selling a license also wouldn't fix anything. Unless there's a jurisdiction out there somewhere that allows the transfer only in exchange for money or in a one-on-one contract, but then open source licenses also wouldn't apply there and I feel like I would've heard about it as a fun fact somewhere on the Internet by now...
The free as in freedom, but not as in free beer quadrant doesn't work too well, especially for individual developers.
Also, I believe that public domain as a concept does not exist in some countries. if i remember correctly the concern is that without a license the original author could change their mind and sue.
But any public domain software also matches the fsf and osi definition of free software and open source respectively. Atleast in jurisdictions where public domain exists.
You may be confusing things with copy-left, which is designed to protect users from developers. The gpl is a copy-left license.
Even the idea that whatever we dislike that gains more than zero popularity should be compared to a virus, this meme spreads like a virus.
It's not "open source licensed" simply because it is not licensed. There is no license document for OSI to approve.
Relying on OSI approval does not necessarily make sense, they don't get to all licenses as your link points out. However arguing over their definition seems very foolish. People only do it when they want to pass their all-rights-reserved code as "open source" (e.g. "I can call it what I want"). Having adjectives that mean the same to everyone is very valuable, actually.
Yes, and that's precisely why OSI should have invented a brand new term which they could trademark. But instead they co-opted "open source" which already had a clear, generic meaning of "the source code is available", previously without any connotations around specific license terms. And then due to that prior usage of the term, OSI can't trademark it.
OSI created this terminology mess, and personally I don't think it is "foolish" to argue with their historical revisionism campaign around it.
Edit to add: for numerous proven examples of the term being used for many years prior to the OSI's existence, read the link ezekg already posted below, https://dieter.plaetinck.be/posts/open-source-undefined-part...
As for the pre-1998 meaning not being "clear", that's a matter of opinion. I would counter that OSI choosing to redefine an already existing term, and then falsely claim they invented that term, makes things far less clear.
Please read the link I included above. That post author's findings completely align with my own recollection from discussions on BBS's and newsgroups in the 90s.
I for one like where we are (which is not an endorsement of OSI as an organization, just of their definition). The terms are short and universally understood, there is a wide range of licenses to choose from, some of them even got a yay/nay from lawyers.
A fair number of vocal people in the industry express contempt for anything using a non-OSI license, even though many of these licenses are simply trying to empower a sustainable business model so the work can't be stolen and abused by cloud providers.
If you independently create a truly innovative new infrastructure software product today (or during any other non-ZIRP / non-boom-time period) with the intention of forming a company around it, you are faced with several bad options around licensing and source availability:
* If you adopt an OSI-approved license other than AGPL, and your product is successful, larger incumbents can and will steal your work and capture most of its value. You will either go out of business, or eventually need to re-license, causing mass outrage and accusations of rug-pulling.
* If you choose AGPL, most VC-funded companies won't touch your software and statistically it will almost certainly fail commercially as a result. Additionally there are several concerning theoretical loopholes in the AGPL, as well as conceptual problems with a non-EULA nonetheless trying to enforce restrictions affecting end users.
* If you choose an entirely close-sourced model, your chance of success is very very low, especially for B2B products. You're a small/new vendor, other companies won't trust you.
So the logical conclusion is you should choose a non-OSI license which prevents the cloud providers from stealing the profits from your hard work. But then random people will attack you everywhere for "open washing" and not being "open source", even if you don't use the word "open" anywhere. People have seemingly been trained to have a knee-jerk negative reaction to SSPL, BSL, etc and that's a really bad state of affairs.
It's especially problematic that the OSI is a closed-membership entity, and not an open-membership professional association. There is no democratic way for software engineers to influence its policies. As an industry we've effectively ceded control over what licenses are acceptable to a random small non-profit. And as a result of that, it's harder today to be a successful independent software vendor than it was in the 90s, which is an absurd state of affairs.
I already described problems with that approach up-thread. People attack software that uses non-OSI-approved licenses and accuse it of "open washing" even if it avoids the term "open". Or they attack it for not being "open source" and refuse to use it, even if they're not working at a cloud provider or competitor, and are completely unaffected by the extra license terms.
In any case you're repeatedly saying "open source" when you actually mean "OSI-approved", which is the entire thing I'm railing against here.
> You can also dual license gpl/proprietary use license
That solves literally none of the cloud provider problems I've described above.
I also like the current terminology better tbh ("open", "available").
Instead we have a situation where they didn't invent the term but they lie about it and said they did. They don't have a trademark and obviously aren't a government agency, so enforcement is left to random people acting as self-appointed terminology police on their behalf. And then we get huge subthreads like this one, where a bunch of people have to argue about whether one of the most successful open source projects in history is really even "open source" :)
That is true for most of us, but there are jurisdictions that do not recognise the public domain in the same way. SQLite's license page mentions this and offers licensing for people who need to deal with this. https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html
OSI also says Public Domain is not open source: Public Domain Is Not Open Source https://opensource.org/blog/public-domain-is-not-open-source
This is wrong, and harmfully wrong. OSI are not the arbiters of open source. Their Open Source Definition, though generally useful and accepted, is not without legitimate criticism and controversy. As for their approval, that’s a dreadful thing to rely on for any purpose; <https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/05/05/Rely-on-OSI.html> is a good description of most of what’s wrong with it (it doesn’t really get into the broken politics enough; but some of his other articles contain more), and I like its summary: “The list of OSI-approved licenses reflects OSI’s practical and political history, not any useful, consistently functional category of license terms.”
As for whether SQLite is open source, well, the only reason a public domain dedication doesn’t meet the OSD is that it’s not a license. It’s more open. In a way that is legally mildly uncertain in some jurisdictions, sure, but to call it “not open source in the legal sense” is just wrong.