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.
I mean, Eric Raymond who was one of the original coiners of the term “Open Source” co-founded the Open Source Initiative which still maintains the most official definition of Open Source out there. And the definition explicitly includes the stipulation that in order to be considered “Open Source” it must allow derivative works and no discrimination against persons or groups or fields of endeavor (which implies allowing commercial resale.)
If you want a term that means “the source is available,” go get another term because “Open Source” isn’t it. (In fact, there is a term that means that. It’s “source available.”)
deleted by creator
I mean, some guy can create guidelines for what they personally consider “general relativity” but the phrase is self-explanatory and you can’t just proclaim it’s untrue because it doesn’t meet your personal preferences.
This community literally uses the OSI Open Source logo as its avatar. Do you also go to AA meetings and insist that “Alcoholics Anonymous” is a club for moonshiners interested in keeping their identities secret?
deleted by creator
I believe their point here was that your claim that “open source” is self explanatory is wrong. You’ve imprinted your definition onto it and called it “common sense” without thinking further about how how nebulous it is without extra context. This is then driven home by your lack of understanding on the AA discussion.
Exactly right. Thanks.
deleted by creator
I mean yeah, that’s how words work? AA has the meaning because a bunch of people imprinted their meaning on it.
Open source has a meaning because a bunch of people imprinted their meaning on it too, it has no relevance to actual words “open” or “source”. The issue is that other people are now imprinting their own meaning on it and muddling it instead of following the existing meaning or coming up with their own terminology.
deleted by creator
Right. Neither is “Open Source.” At least not any more so than “general relativity.”
And the OSI’s definition of “Open Source” is not just “you can see the source code”. And you’re telling a community explicitly about the OSI’s definition of “Open Source” that “Open Source” doesn’t mean what the OSI says it does.
In here, it most definitely does. And if it doesn’t elsewhere, that’s pretty fucked up and concerning for the future of the Open Source movement. (To which people who claim “Open Source” only means you can see the source code have no valid claim of membership.)
deleted by creator