Is it just me or is passing off things that aren’t FOSS as FOSS a much bigger thing lately than it was previously.

Don’t get me wrong. I remember Microsoft’s “shared source” thing from back in the day. So I know it’s not a new thing per se. But it still seems like it’s suddenly a bigger problem than it was previously.

LLaMa, the large language model, is billed by Meta as “Open Source”, but isn’t.

I just learned today about “Grayjay,” a video streaming service client app created by Louis Rossmann. Various aticles out there are billing it as “Open Source” or “FOSS”. It’s not. Grayjay’s license doesn’t allow commercial redistribution or derivative works. Its source code is available to the general public, but that’s far from sufficient to qualify as “Open Source.” (That article even claims “GrayJay is an open-source app, which means that users are free to alter it to meet their specific needs,” but Grayjay’s license grants no license to create modified versions at all.) FUTO, the parent project of Grayjay pledges on its site that “All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open-source or develop a plan to eventually become so.” I hope that means that they’ll be making Grayjay properly Open Source at some point. (Maybe once it’s sufficiently mature/tested?) But I worry that they’re just conflating “source available” and “Open Source.”

I’ve also seen some sentiment around that “whatever, doesn’t matter if it doesn’t match the OSI’s definition of Open Source. Source available is just as good and OSI doesn’t get a monopoly on the term ‘Open Source’ anyway and you’re being pedantic for refusing to use the term ‘Open Source’ for this program that won’t let you use it commercially or make modifications.”

It just makes me nervous. I don’t want to see these terms muddied. If that ultimately happens and these terms end up not really being meaningful/helpful, maybe the next best thing is to only speak in terms of concrete license names. We all know the GPL, MIT, BSD, Apache, Mozilla, etc kind of licenses are unambiguously FOSS licenses in the strictest sense of the term. If a piece of software is under something that doesn’t have a specific name, then the best we’d be able to do is just read it and see if it matches the OSI definition or Free Software definition.

Until then, I guess I’ll keep doing my best to tell folks when something’s called FOSS that isn’t FOSS. I’m not sure what else to do about this issue, really.

  • OtterEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    I agree that there are more things lying (or being misleading) about their open source. OpenAI is another one that doesn’t match the name anymore

    At the same time there’s a spectrum of open source, reflected by the range of licenses. IMO any level of open source is better than not having it, and sometimes it makes sense to restrict it a little bit.

    • ex. The reasoning given by GrayJay was that they don’t want a bunch of malware / ad filled clones running around, and I think that’s reasonable justification? I often see posts complaining about fake apps with similar names, and this might help GrayJay avoid that headache. At the end of the day, they’re making something useful available for free and opening up their source for others to inspect and learn from.

    What I think is also happening is that it’s now more popular to be open source. So more people are making things SOMEWHERE on the spectrum of open source rather than closed source only, and so we’re seeing more content that doesn’t properly match the culture of FOSS development.

    I feel like that’s still an improvement, but I’m new to the world of FOSS so I’d love to hear more thoughts :)

    • @[email protected]
      3•1 year ago

      The reasoning given by GrayJay was that they don’t want a bunch of malware / ad filled clones running around, and I think that’s reasonable justification?

      It’s not.

      1. That just hasn’t been a problem for open source projects. I’ve been using almost only open source since like 2007, and I’ve never seen or heard about an ad-filled clone of some of them. Even if they are a thing, they’ve never reached me as a user.
      2. If someone did want to distribute malware clones, they won’t be stopped by a license restriction.
      • @[email protected]
        7•1 year ago

        The ad filled clones are definitely a thing. Just search for newpipe in the Play Store and you will see them. A lot of people don’t know about the fdroid store so when they hear about newpipe they search on Play Store and end up downloading a fake one full of ads.

        • @[email protected]
          2•1 year ago

          Huh. I guess that’s what happens when Google actually prefer that you download the add-y version, because they also make money from the ads.

      • Joël de Bruijn
        6•1 year ago

        I believe Firefox had their fair share of problematic clones but they dont protect from that by licensing their code in a special way. They protect their brand and use of logo etc

        So you can use the code and create something “new”, you just cant call it Firefox anymore.

      • OtterEnglish
        3•1 year ago

        For #1: It’s pretty common for example with the YouTube frontends, downloaders, etc. UBlock Origin has a set of filters to warn when you arrive at a fake site. Try googling “revanced”, you should run across one

        For #2: Fair, but wouldn’t the license make it easier to go after the other ones legally? It’s easier to submit a takedown request if you can back it up. It won’t stop someone very motivated, but it’s a barrier still

        • @TootSweetOPEnglish
          3•1 year ago

          For #2, it depends what you mean by “malware”. If it’s something fraudulent, they’re breaking the law anyway. Surely if they’re not afraid of criminal charges they’re not afraid of a little copyright infringement. If you’re talking about something more like “antifeatures”, I’d argue that copyleft is better than “no derivatives” for that particular case.