> What principles and values of the open source movement are protected by staunchly refusing to allow "source available" to call itself open source?
The part where the license says "Don't run this on your server and charge people money for it, or we will sue you"?
I know that everyone thinks of Big Tech absorbing your project into their SaaS when they do this, but there are other ways (say AGPL) to combat that. O'SaaSy seems to me to be essentially a "give us your code for free, and you can self host it, but don't dare to charge $$ for it or else!" license.
Now you're bringing lawyers into the picture for anyone who's hosting your software on their servers. It's very reasonable for a SaaS company that wants to defend its moat, but it's not Open Source.
(Talking of, I'm actually curious if anyone has seen actual self-hosted Fizzy instances in the wild.)
I didn't ask which part of the license violates OSS values, I asked what those principles and values are. I will infer that "anybody can do whatever they want with the code" is the principle you are referring to.
I kind of thought that it was more about stuff like sharing and personal development and edification and the ability to see inside and understand things. But let's get really divisive over the money stuff.
It's about unambiguously understanding exactly what my rights are and how I can use that code.
In the case of the janky new 37signals license: what exactly counts as "... where the primary value of the service is the functionality of the Software itself"?
Who gets to define the "primary value" of the thing I built?
So would you say that (in your opinion) a source available license could in theory call itself open source, if it used language you found to be unambiguous about your rights? Or is that not possible?
If it calls itself "open source"
and I go to https://opensource.org/licenses and can't find an approved copy of the license - or I can't ask my favourite open source expert lawyer for their advice on it - then I don't want it to call itself open source.
I apologize for having missed the mark with your question.
> I will infer that "anybody can do whatever they want with this code, OR ELSE YOU'RE NOT WORTHY" is the principle you are referring to.
I feel like there's cynicism in your phrasing, but a perhaps more neutral phrasing would be "Don't pick and choose what specific circumstances your users can use this for".
Giving the users source code and no rights to do anything with it really doesn't give them very much. Software freedom advocates are not just nerds who really enjoy reading source code. The point is that if you have the source code and the right to change it then you take control of the activity the software is doing, or helping you to do. If you don't have control, being able to read the source code is not very useful.
Well certainly there is some reasonable middle ground between everything and nothing, which is presumably what licenses like this one are trying to explore? People are afforded rights beyond just looking at it, they can run it, modify it, learn from it, there's just some specific things that are carved out (to my understanding as a layperson).
Every major voice that I've seen comment on this thus far seems to acknowledge the value and the rationale behind the license, they're just saying you can't call it open source.
Would you say that the "free software" and "open source" movements are largely synonymous? I guess I thought free software was a more strict subset that has the "all or nothing" philosophy centered around truly "free" software. Which is honorable and commendable. But is there really no room for stuff that's a little more gray area? I get the rug pull, I get that it's not truly owned by the community, but it still seems like a useful ally and a step in the right direction from fully closed source. With support there could be norms and culture developed to safeguard from bad behavior.
The context of what the software does should also be taken into account. The best arguments I've seen in this thread revolve around the idea that you can trust that you can pull an "open source" library into your project without hesitation. That is a beautiful "free as in libre" building blocks vision. But the software in question here is a completed end-user product. It's not ever intended to be used in another project. But they want to make some kind of good-faith effort to share and be more "open" than normal proprietary SaaS. Instead of this being a good thing it's a huge drama because it's not enough. At least that's my read.
> Would you say that the "free software" and "open source" movements are largely synonymous?
Would you say Canadians and Americans are largely synonymous? They have many shared interests. There are many dual citizens. The differences are subtle often.
> The best arguments I've seen in this thread revolve around the idea that you can trust that you can pull an "open source" library into your project without hesitation. That is a beautiful "free as in libre" building blocks vision.
Several people highlighted a key idea of open source and free software is you can run an open source program without hesitation. This was not beautiful? These arguments were inferior?
> But the software in question here is a completed end-user product. It's not ever intended to be used in another project.
Libraries used parts of programs. Programs became libraries. Programs evolved into different programs.
> But they want to make some kind of good-faith effort to share and be more "open" than normal proprietary SaaS. Instead of this being a good thing it's a huge drama because it's not enough. At least that's my read.
I don't know how the submitted article could have contradicted this more clearly.
> Would you say Canadians and Americans are largely synonymous? They have many shared interests. There are many dual citizens. The differences are subtle often.
What would source available be in this analogy?
> Several people highlighted a key idea of open source and free software is you can run an open source program without hesitation. This was not beautiful? These arguments were inferior?
I think we're saying the same thing. Those are the arguments I was referring to.
> Libraries used parts of programs. Programs became libraries. Programs evolved into different programs.
I don't know what this means.
> I don't know how the submitted article could have contradicted this more clearly.
An expanded analogy would not increase understanding I think. It would be better to ask and answer the question behind the analogy request probably.
Did we say the same thing? You suggested a library and a completed end-user product should be considered differently I thought. I suggested they should be considered similarly.
The title of the submitted article said it was okay source available is not open source. It said DHH's choice of license reacts to a real pressure in open source. It said source available was defensible and generous.
> An expanded analogy would not increase understanding I think.
Why not? Is there a better one? The relationship between open source and source available (and free software) is the core of what I'm trying to understand.
> You suggested a library and a completed end-user product should be considered differently I thought.
I suggested that later. I maybe should not have used library at that point. I'm not saying that they should fundamentally be considered differently. I'm just saying it might behoove the movement to be a little bit more welcoming, and guiding, of some of these gray area efforts.
Software licensing is fundamentally a social/political/legal "people" issue, not a mathematical/logical one. Clinging to a beautiful elegant mathematical rule that sticks it head in the sand w.r.t. the messy world of human behavior, while also claiming the moral high ground, is maybe what I feel is a bit of bad faith (or, more charitably, clashing ideologies that I feel could be united by finding a middle ground). I would also argue that there is somewhat more responsibility to show good faith on the side of the gatekeepers than the people being kept out.
> The title of the submitted article said it was okay source available is not open source.
When I said "huge drama" I was referring to the whole thing - the posts referenced by that article, the comments, the words that have been spilt on how many words have been spilt on this issue. The point of the article is, it's great, but do not call it open source. Because there is a stringent mathematical definition of open source, and even though there's a wider world of projects that might not fully identify with that but want to participate in the colloquial spirit of being "open," we want to be very clear that they are not a part of this and need to sit at their own "not-open" table.
Being able to fork a project when management turns hostile is one of the most effective ways GPL software protects itself from enshittification and corporate sabotage. Source available does nothing to prevent this.
This can also be true, say, of a dump of leaked Windows source code. Would you say that that's Open Source? Why not? What's different between that and Fizzy? Fizzy's creators will also sue you in certain cases.
> Why is it so important that they can use it for whatever they want?
It's important only in terms of the ethics of calling yourself open. The OSI (and many other commenters here, and me) are saying that open source should be defined by lack of restrictions on the usage; DHH etc. are saying that it should be defined by lack of restrictions on the access.
The reasons why I think usage-based definition rather than access-based definitions are more reasonable are:
- Providing access to code is relatively cheap/easy today. This wasn't always true in the past.
- Usage has a lot more variables than access. If you start putting restrictions on it, anyone using it has to stop and think about their usage to ensure it's not falling afoul of the restrictions. For example, if I put Fizzy on my server and provide free access to it for anyone on the internet without the 1000-item limit, does that qualify as "directly compet[ing] with the original Licensor by offering it to third parties as a hosted Cloud Service"? I would hope not, but if I want to make sure I have to pay a lawyer hundreds of dollars.
The leak is not open source because it was not blessed by the creators. If we're worried about rug pull stuff, maybe there's some type of governance or commitments that can be worked out. Ultimately yeah we're at the whim of the company, but that's the status quo, this still seems like a step in the right direction to be encouraged and fostered and not shit on. I just don't think the hardline strategy is really winning hearts and minds to the cause.
> If you start putting restrictions on it, anyone using it has to stop and think about their usage to ensure it's not falling afoul of the restrictions.
Is this really that ornery? In practice, with a license like this, are people doing benign things hunted down and hassled? The whole "I can do whatever I want and never get sued" angle kinda seems a little selfish or at least not super good-samaritan? I recall the brouhaha over the "don't do evil" license. Can't we find a good-faith agreement between interests?
Shit on, hardline, ornery, benign, selfish, good faith are loaded words. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine.[1]
> Ultimately yeah we're at the whim of the company, but that's the status quo, this still seems like a step in the right direction to be encouraged and fostered and not shit on. I just don't think the hardline strategy is really winning hearts and minds to the cause.
This is not the status quo in open source. And open source has been very successful. Open source is the status quo of much software.
Do you imagine many companies would make their proprietary programs source available if and only if they could call it open source? I do not.
> In practice, with a license like this, are people doing benign things hunted down and hassled?
Selling software as a service is benign in open source. And do you understand the question of if the license is good or acceptable and if the license should be called open source are different?
> I recall the brouhaha over the "don't do evil" license.
Your point was what?
> Can't we find a good-faith agreement between interests?
Anyone can use any license they want. Anyone can invent a new term if they consider common terms inadequate. Using a common term misleadingly intentionally and calling people triggered show bad faith.[2]
I will give you shit on, hardline, and selfish - my apologies. I need to slow down.
By status quo I meant the closed source / proprietary world, which also supports a lot of open source projects with contributions and funding. Source available would seem, to me, to be creating an avenue to move closed things in a more open direction, and bring more people "into the fold", per sé.
> And do you understand the question of if the license is good or acceptable and if the license should be called open source are different?
That question was motivated by the several comments expressing fears of being sued. I'm curious if there is a pattern of behavior among source available projects driving that, or if it's more just in principle. It was somewhat orthogonal to the question of calling it open source.
> Your point was what?
Fair—but, my point was that, there are people that are trying to do good things for humanity (not talking about DHH here), and open source is trying to do good things for humanity, and I don't know it just sucks to see them at odds and divided. But I do understand better the functional definition of open source and the zeroth freedom, even if it still feels a bit dogmatic to me. Or maybe just a clash between libertarian and liberal ideals.
> I will give you shit on, hardline, and selfish - my apologies. I need to slow down.
This was a good step. But you will not admit calling it was loaded to call people who prefer legal clarity ornery?
> That question was motivated by the several comments expressing fears of being sued. I'm curious if there is a pattern of behavior among source available projects driving that, or if it's more just in principle.
A license is a legal document. Its purpose is to communicate when and to fear being sued or not. Source available, closed source, or open source are the same in this context. Have software copyright owners sued license violators? Yes. Treating legal documents seriously is not just principle.
> Fair—but, my point was that, there are people that are trying to do good things for humanity (not talking about DHH here), and open source is trying to do good things for humanity, and I don't know it just sucks to see them at odds and divided. But I do understand better the functional definition of open source and the zeroth freedom, even if it still feels a bit dogmatic to me. Or maybe just a clash between libertarian and liberal ideals.
This was not a conflict between open source and source available. It was a conflict between open source and someone who knew better who used the term misleadingly for promotion.
Dogma to you is learning from history to others.
Libertarian and liberal may be the right words or not. But the impression the different groups have different ideals is correct.
> This was a good step. But you will not admit calling it was loaded to call people who prefer legal clarity ornery?
I did not intend to call the person ornery, I was asking if it was that ornery to them to have to care about getting sued, and pay attention to license terms, basically. This is one area where I think there is a meaningful distinction between libraries and end-user products.
> Treating legal documents seriously is not just principle.
Treating them seriously is one thing, automatically dismissing anything that doesn't provide unfettered rights is another. I understand the high value of that in certain contexts, but should those have claim to all of "open source"?
> The part where the license says "Don't run this on your server and charge people money for it, or we will sue you"?
A bit offtopic but could re-generation of the project with LLM (with for example prompt "rewrite the <repo> changing every line of code") help protecting from being sued? If yes, then the OS licensing is doomed to fail.
We had a trial about this if I'm not mistaken. For a piece of software to be declared as not infringing on another, its developers need to use a "clean room" approach when developing it. Giving an LLM a repo to copy is definitely not "clean room".
This is a good technical point. But this seems to kind of argue that one of the principles of open source is that businesses should be able to pull it into their proprietary projects to make money without hesitation. Is that accurate? I thought that was kind of more of a bonus.
I feel like it's participating in the spirit of open source and should be welcomed, if someone wants to make their code available but just wants to try and restrict anything-goes usage. But I can see the purity argument.
There are open source licenses that don't allow businesses to use them to make money without hesitation like the AGPL.
What matters is clarity. If code is licensed under a known open source license businesses know exactly what they can do with that code. Other users of the code also know that it supports the core criteria outlined in https://opensource.org/osd
These terms are designed to trick people exactly like you. "Source available" means you can sue anyone that shares a modification of your code for any reason you want to make up.
I'm going to respond here assuming you are being genuine and not facetious or sarcastic (even though I am hoping you were).
"Source available" doesn't in any way mean "you can sue anyone that uses your code for any reason...". The irony of highlighting the trickery of these terms then you yourself perpetuating wrong definitions is... amusing.
"Source available" is by definition ill-defined, in the sense that "open source" is defined. There is no trademark, stewarding body, or legal entity behind "Source available". It only exists in relation to OSI defined "open source".
Which is to say, it is defined as code that does not fit the "Open Source Definition (OSD)" yet its source code is viewable. Maybe its modifiable, maybe its free to use, but maybe its neither. Thats all anyone can factually attribute to the definition of "Source available". Nothing about "suing ... for any reason".
Again, hoping you were making your comment in good fun, otherwise it doesn't look too good for you.
I edited it to be more specific while you were typing that.
The entire point of copyright is a legal mechanism to sue people. "Source-available" at a minimum is someone sharing their code under their own copyright and terms of use.
All code is shared "under someones own copyright and terms". Whether you use pre-existing words or not doesn't define if its open-source or source-available. I can write a license right now that I maintain the copyright, and written with my own terms that complies with the OSD. We happen to have a collection of existing licenses that have been vetted, but it isn't a exclusionary whitelist.
I'll reiterate, "source available" can only be defined as not OSD code that is viewable. Everything else is entirely open to implementation and interpretation.
This is the largest problem with the term. This is in stark contract to examples like "Fair Source" which has a legal definition like the OSD, and a entity behind it stewarding that definition [0], while being a subset of Source Available. All fair source is source available, not all source available is fair source.
Yet, fair source doesn't fall into your definition of source available.
Thats a fair (no pun) question! The reason "source available" exists is to starkly seperate it from "open source", yet to your point, they certainly can be both. However it is reductive/pointless to say my code is "open source and source available" since of course the source is available if its open source.
This highlights my knee-jerk reaction to your initial post. My original definition I provided for Source Available was "[viewable but not OSD]". This is overly restrictive since can be both, but to assign any meaning at all Source Available it needs to be defined in relation to "Open Source", otherwise its meaningless.
I think it comes to analogies, with open source you have a public park you are free to use. With source available it is public park you are free to look at behind a fence... So not actually public park. Still a fine thing to exist.
As user as well. Difference between I can use this for free and I have to pay to use this. Even if I can see parts inside is significant.
It might not be real principle, but at least it is real difference.
Wouldn't it be more along the lines of "source available" being a public park that you're free to access but can't monetize by e.g. selling tickets to - while "open source" would let you do whatever you want with the park.
Ironically I think the analogy explains why many people find "source available" to align with their moral compass more than "open source" necessarily does.
Source available is a park where there is some set of activities you are forbidden from doing in the park, but you're never sure exactly which. One day you realize your driveway goes directly into the park, and if you transit to your office through the park you get sued. The park vendor is also trying to get you to buy a home inside the park.
They’re not at all on the same team. “Open source” is given away for free, to do what you want with it. Source available is not. Fundamentally they have nothing in common other than the fact that you are allowed to read the source code.
"Source Available" is "follow whatever my rules are or I will sue you". That could include something as crazy as a license that says "be a dick and I will sue you". For normal people that can't afford legal fees or lawyers that gives "source available" a big range of abusive possibilities.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to licenses that will be open source in X years, but the open source ethos is that, with proper attribution, we can do whatever with the code, the only restriction being that for some projects a derivative work needs to also be open source (while others don't care even about that)
If we were to welcome non-open source projects into a larger community, we should probably begin with licenses that forbid the usage of the software in military and things like that. Which fails to be open source for the same reason: it puts limits in how you can use the code
Some people have internalized the words "open" "source" to mean more than the words, even going so far as to eschew the benefit (which was at the heart of the Stallman problem) because it doesn't fit the desired ethos and license. It's counterproductive, indeed.
People use the term to refer to a proprietary definition from the OSI, which is an OK convention. I just wish they would capitalize it, and leave the normal interpretation of the words also available.
> People use the term to refer to a proprietary definition from the OSI
some people do. A vast minority of the superset. Most people (person on the street) take the words "open source" at face value and dispense with the whole idea when faced with a needless ideological argument. This specific process of thought is casually observed in most entry compsci highschool/college classrooms. The whole point of open source was to achieve a goal, which has ironically been subject to feature creep.
Not the same team. Open source isn't really about the license, and it's also not even really about the source; open source is a philosophy centering open development and collaboration. Sharing the source is necessary, but not sufficient. Too often, "source available" means you get to see the source, but you are not invited to participate in development, and certainly you're not going to be participating in collaboration.
"Source available" projects want the benefits of being associated with that egalitarian philosophy because it's popular amongst technologists, who are their initial customers. But they don't want to actually practice the philosophy because their core interest is protecting their IP to turn a profit, not open collaboration and development. Outside contributions are considered a liability in many source available projects [1].
This is important because source available projects have in the past resulted in a "rug pull", when the project gets enough airspeed, so they start putting more work into the closed source to placate their investors. Once the technologists are not the primary users, the entire source available charade is done. The available source becomes deprecated, features are moved to the closed source branch, and eventually the available source rots.
One final point: if we call source available "open source", then what are we going to call open source to differentiate it from source available. Because they're actually different things.
Edit: (this is to the response below me, as I'm rate limited now and I'm going to bed so I'll forget to post this tomorrow)
If anyone tried to do this then the project would be forked immediately. An open source project can go closed source, but as an OSS project, everyone should already have everything the need to keep it going despite that, and that all remains open. That's why we love open source.
Also, it'd be really hard to pull off if they've accepted a lot of outside contributions -- when you submit code to an open source project, you retain the copyright. This is not a problem as long as the project is licensed under the agreement under which they submitted the commit, which only grants rights to redistribute under that license. At least that's how it works with Apache 2.0 (I believe, IANAL). So to go closed source, they'd need agreements from all of their contributors to do so.
Now, it can happen. MongoDB is an example. But as far as I can tell, you'd have a hard time of it if you accepted contributions from people and they.
> Open source isn't really about the license, and it's also not even really about the source; open source is a philosophy centering open development and collaboration.
Not really. A project under an open source license which doesn't accept contributions is still open source.
It is totally about the license and the source code availability.
There are interesting things to say about the various development models, and those common in the open source world, but the open source aspect and the development model aspect should not be mixed.
I'm not actually claiming that an open source license that doesn't accept contributions is not open source. See my post where I say it's not a bright line.
But claiming open source is totally about the source and the license completely erases the diverse and vibrant community that has formed around open source over the past 40 years. The license is simply putting the community ethos into a legal document. The source being open represents a meeting place which focuses and collects the community. But the real power of open source is the human element that drives it, and the development philosophy they hold, not the source code.
Linux for instance wouldn't nearly be the powerhouse it is if it were merely "source available". You're really misunderstanding the power of open source if you think it's all about the code, and not the development model.
The human aspects, the diverse and vibrant community that has formed around open source over the past 40 years are key, I just think that we should cleanly separate the concepts.
A piece of software is open source if and only if it's released under an open source license. It's necessary and sufficient. Also "source available" is necessary but not sufficient.
Then we can and should talk about how and why open source and free software appeared, and the other social aspects around open source and free software and how they are crucial.
I'm not stating that the whole thing is not important (clearly, it is),
it's just that keeping the concepts separate and clean helps communicating clearly.
My stance is already mostly not technical actually. I would push for free software and the human rights it embodies way more than open source despite open source and free software concerning mostly the same actual software. The tools (licenses) are mostly the same, but the intent and the approach can be very different.
Even the open source definition and the free software definitions are tools. They must remain clear and simple to be useful and powerful.
If you mix everything, we can talk about nothing.
There are many ways to develop open source software, including alone from a garage by throwing the source code out of the window without never looking outside. If you make the community aspect part of the open source definition, you break this.
Haven't open source projects done the rug pull too? Can't they relicense new code going forward?
I guess I would have thought of source available as existing under the open source umbrella. I get that there is an important distinction but from an adoption and evangelism standpoint it seems like an unnecessary crusade to push them away.
Do those projects have a strong track record of behaving badly? Do you think DHH has those types of intentions? (I don't know much about him really)
> Haven't open source projects done the rug pull too? Can't they relicense new code going forward?
They can, if the original license is permissive, or if there was a CLA. They can't for significant contributions under a copyleft license that was not done under a CLA. Something to consider when contributing to a project that uses a CLA or a permissive license.
> I get that there is an important distinction but from an adoption and evangelism standpoint it seems like an unnecessary crusade to push them away.
Depends on your goals. If source available misses the point anyway, adoption doesn't help, the message risks being blurred, and therefore you should push back.
To an outsider it looks like counterproductive bickering between people on the same team.