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.
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I’m utterly convinced overloading the term “open” was a very bad mistake in terms of how much confusion it created. Yes, “open-source” in the OSI definition means open to read, but also open to modification and redistribution. Having to make the distinction and explain the difference with “source available” is in itself a failure in communication.
That’s what you get when you use one existing word for a somewhat complex set of principles. It makes it easier to talk about it, because you don’t have to learn new vocabulary or go through the list of requirements every time, but it also opens the door for misinterpretations. Imo it’s good that we have a simple term for it, but we also have to educate people to make sure it doesn’t lose its proper meaning.
It would be nice if the term “open source” could get some kind of legal protection. Like you can’t call your product “cheese” if it doesn’t have at least x% of actual cheese in it.
Libre Software was/is the best strict definition of this to me.
I think the only thing we’re missing is the official OSI definition for open-source-for-reading-but-not-modifying so we don’t use the same name as for the open-source-for-reading-and-modifying code? The issue seems that we don’t have OSI-defined names for both, just for one, so people started misusing it unknowingly while the businesses misused it maliciously.
Best you can do is accuse something of being open washing, or correct people by saying that it does not fit the OSI definition which is widely accepted (it’s based on debian guidelines) and the software is at best “partially open source”.
Having a github page with a list of problematic projects and licenses could be useful.
ClosedAI
ClosedAL
I’m from the generation that used to have sound cards, and I’m very sad about what Creative did to the industry…
Oh shit! “Open washing” is a term I never knew I needed in my lexicon until now.
And yes. A running list of such projects would be awesome to have. I migrated all my projects to Gitlab when Microsoft bought Github (in retrospect, I wish I’d gone to Codeberg) but I’d love to see a project that collected examples like that in one place. I could probably be persuaded to start/maintain it. (As long as it’s not on Github. Lol.)
That might be useful if someone will want to learn if a particular project is not really open source, and raise awareness to the issue of open washing, if it will get enough links it might appear on search results raising even more awareness to the issue.
You could always start it, ask for positive feed back saying it will motivate you and validate that the efforts you are doing are useful, you could later abandon it and someone else might take it and continue to maintaining it.
Can we get a term like this for AI. I’m so goddam sick and tired of everything being called AI that clearly and obviously isn’t.
We developed a system that looks for red and when it sees red it KNoOOoOAwwWWss that it is seeing red and does stuff. It’s a super effective, ground breaking, world shaping, paradigm changing AI system. Give us money please.
Open Source has meant Source Available for quite a while.
FOSS is different than Open Source, and it’s a distinction that very likely needs to be made.
Muddying the waters is the oldest trick in the books, big corporations have even started doing it with “indie” games - Dave the Diver is stylized and marketed as an indie game despite being developed by a division of a multi-billion company Nexon.
I definitely have an issue with it as well, it’s really hard to say whether something is actually FOSS nowadays or not, and whether it can be taken away or acquired by someone else down the line. That could be my fault as well since I never bothered to learn about the licenses beyond what MIT / Apache2 are, and even those I understand superficially.
There should absolutely be more pushback for things like these though.
I’d like a license where the source is available but companies need to pay to use
Something akin to the Creative Commons Share-alike non-commercial license?
Oh, maybe that? Can that be applied to code?
Not directly.
Though I’d kinda like to talk to a lawyer about the viability of a license whose terms are something like
This software is furnished free of charge for use or study for any purpose other than shareholder profit. Use or study of this software for any purpose that would benefit businesses supported by shareholders is strictly prohibited.
Because I’ve got code I wouldn’t mind some folks who are selling art on Etsy or making games on itch.io using, but I’ll be throatfucked before I’d let Amazon or Facebook have it.
So Prosperity 3.0.0 or Peer Production License?
Creative Commons does not work for code.
Ah unfortunately, I’m not very good with licensing. But any license that can achieve what I mentioned would be perfect. I just want the authors of such software to be able to distribute their code without being fucked over by major corporations
Beware that these licenses are not compatible with GPL. You would have to dual-license or rely just on ISC, MIT, etc. types of licenses for libraries since GPL doesn’t allow you to restrict based on industry or business model. We would need a larger pool of copyfair or copyfarleft licensed code to have a reasonable pool of code in the Commons to pull from for free software but a lot of it is GPL.
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There’s no reason I know of why a license like that couldn’t exist, but it wouldn’t qualify as “Open Source” by the OSI’s definition.
Isn’t that what Unreal Engine has?
I’ve also heard it referred to as “source available”.
No, if you agree to their license then you have access to the source. There is no payment required
In your unreal account you need to link your GitHub account to it then you will have access to it
You can also modify and redistribute it/sell it without any fees (the license passes downstream so your users would still owe Epic royalties after $1 million earned)
This failure of the word “open” to mean one clear and specific thing just feels like an echo of the failure of “free” to mean one clear and specific thing.
Someone came up with the term “free” in the context of software, and a bunch of people asked, “Ah, so that means I don’t have to pay for it?” And half the room went, “Yep, of course!” and the other half of the room went, “Ehrm, not exactly…” And from that point on, we’ve had to amend the word “free” with awkward qualifiers like “as in freedom, not as in beer”, or attempt to introduce a clarifying companion term like “libre” to try and capture one of the competing meanings.
I’m sure the “open” in “open source” is doomed to the same fate. “Source available” is to “open source” what “libre” is to “free”. An awkward clarifying companion term that only dorks like us bother to distinguish.
Yes. I have exactly the same feeling.
And I think if the OSI coined the term ‘open-source’, they get to decide what it means. And words have meanings.
it’s thoose kind of people you want to keep away from important stuff, so you know “open source” is the thing, man! ;-)
The good news is that (sometime last year, long after you posted this) futo finally agreed to stop calling their license “open source”; unfortunately there are still some vocal fans of theirs arguing in various forums that it is.
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 :)
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.
- 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.
- If someone did want to distribute malware clones, they won’t be stopped by a license restriction.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
This is inevitable. You are fighting a fight against the natural development of a language. Maybe we really should start caring more about licenses but the terms will be used by other people nevertheless like they want.
You are fighting a fight against the natural development of a language.
Perhaps, but I fully believe the more successful I and folks who join me in that fight are, the more beneficial it will ultimately be to basically everybody who uses software.
it’s thoose kind of people you want to keep away from important stuff, so you know “open source” is the thing, man! ;-)
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Honestly great question.
While “Free Software” and “Open Source” have different definitions, and the movements behind them have largely different motivations, in practice I’ve heard mostly that there are no pieces of software that qualify as one but not the other. So in practice, they’re equivalent when referring to software licenses (though not so much when referring to the communities/movements.)
Are FOSS and Open Source now synonymous because OSI dropped the term free?
I’m not really sure there’s any sense in which the OSI ever used the term “free.” The Free Software movement used the term “free” and the Open Source movement and the OSI were born out of a splinter group that broke off from the Free Software movement.
I think terms like FOSS and FLOSS are popular partly because again when speaking of software the two are (or at least in practice might as well be) synonymous.
I think there’s also a certain extent to which both the Free Software foks and the Open Source folks recognize that a bit of solidarity between the two groups will ultimately benefit both. So each is willing to give nods to the other by sticking an “F” on the front of their “OSS” or an “OSS” on the end of their “FL” or whatever.
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why do we have two different terms?
Well, I do think it’s still quite useful to have separate terms for the movements. I’d say it’s probably safe to say that “Free Software advocates” believe that all software should be FLOSS whereas “Open Source advocates” think it’s fine for FLOSS and proprietary software to coexist in the whole software ecosystem.
Would we be having issues over the term “source available” vs. “open source” if the Free was never dropped from Free Software?
That’s an interesting question. The term “Free Software” is kindof tied up in connections to Richard Stallman. (Say what you will about that, but having a well-known personality at the head of a movement, even if it has disadvantages, does have upsides.) And the dude is the avatar of pedantism. And I think to anyone with even a passing familiarity with Stallman, that comes through when you use the term “Free Software.” To the point that it’s hard to imagine the term used to mean something other than the four freedoms.
Meanwhile, I imagine a lot of people, when they use the term “Open Source” don’t think of any particular person. Eric Raymond and Bruce Parens are much less known than Stallman.
“Open Source” is a term that’s also much closer to the mainstream. Folks who say “Open Source” are “normies”. If someone uses the term “Free Software” you can likely expect an hour long lecture from them on why the term “GNU Plus Linux” is better than “GNU Slash Linux”.
I think maybe when companies started “open washing” (a term I just learned) efforts, “Open Source” was a much easier target for dilution than “Free Software.” Because again, when you think of the term “Free Software,” you think of pedantic Stallman listing off the easy-to-enumerate four freedoms. When you think of the term “Open Source,” you probably think of a Firefox logo and not Raymond or Parens and not really the ten specific points in the OSI definition.
So in a way, I wonder if “Open Source” hasn’t served as a bit of a shield for “Free Software”. Because “Open Source” was the easier target and “Free Software” is a much more niche concept. (And also arguably because Linus/Linux is more associated with Open Source than Free Software.)
Historically, if the term “Open Source” was never coined, I imagine people would have tried to dilute the term “Free Software”. I suspect they may have had less success, but not no success. And in that case, the term “Free Software” would be eroded today in ways it’s not given that “Open Source” served as a buffer protecting “Free Software.”
What benefit is there in referring to FOSS as Open Source as opposed to FOSS?
Ah. Well, I could see people who use the term “Open Source” loosely also using “FOSS” loosely more so than I could see them using “Free Software” loosely. But I suppose if someone usrs the term “FOSS”, there’s… I guess a stronger case that they shouldn’t be using the term loosely than if they’re using the term “Open Source.”
I’m not saying I’m ok with using the term “Open Source” loosely. But I did admit there may be a possibility we need to start thinking in terms of choosing our battles in the OP.
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No modification at all is pretty bad, but Rossman in his video simply said he wants to avoid scam like whats happening to Newpipe.
Hmm. Good to know his reasoning, I guess. I’m not sure how he thinks that license will prevent that, but at least that makes his thoughts clear.
free
open source ≠ free
open source ≈ source code published
it’s free software
That’s not the accepted usage of the term, though. Rather, open source = free software.
And while I do like the term free software better, I don’t think trying to start war on which term to use would help anything.
free software is relevant
open source is only one point and can also apply to properity software
You can technically can your proprietary software “free” too. But that’s not what the term means. And nether does “open source”.
you can do much with free software. depending on the licence, also unfree software. but then it’s no free software anymore
When I use the term “Open Source” I mean [the OSI definition]https://opensource.org/osd/), which is what the term meant from its inception. If you want to talk about “source code published” software, use a different term. Don’t appropriate “Open Source” or think you’re representative of the Open Source community.
When you say “free” here, do you mean this or something else?
seems like someone tried to solve a problem by declaring
“open source ≈ freesoftware”
You can compile a binary by using the provided code and it gives you a binary, yes.
you modify the code, compile, sell the binary, because “they provided the code” opensours.org said “it means free software” “free as in freedom” so “I am free to do whatever I want with this software.” "
That is untrue. I can open source my product for a reason, but if anyone try to sell it it’s a crime. I openenly show everyone my source code, but without the right licence it’s nothing. often you can’t even compare it to the software running.
That is untrue. I can open source my product for a reason, but if anyone try to sell it it’s a crime. I openenly show everyone my source code, but without the right licence it’s nothing. often you can’t even compare it to the software running.
No, that’s not true. If you open source your product, anyone else can sell it just fine. They can’t do so if you don’t open source it (i.e. if you make it source available).
Just because you think “open source” means “source available” doesn’t mean they are legally equivalent.
Source code published without being open source is usually called “source available”.
