Affirmation of the Open Source Definition

by ifcologne • 7 years ago

32 66 7 years ago

sparkie8• 7 years ago

"open source" is just two words. "open" and "source", the latter being short for source code. I hate to break it to you, but language does not work by having people sign statements to declare that you think certain words can only be used in certain contexts that you think are worthy of your cause.

The people signing such statements are wasting their time. Their signature does not, and cannot prevent people from using "open" and "source" together, to mean something where the source code is open for inspection, if it doesn't quite fit their over-engineered definition.

"open source" and "OSI approved" are simply not synonymous and hopeful wishing will never make it so.

rmmm4• 7 years ago

Bourbon is just a just a name. Champagne is just a region. But whiskeys and wines have to fit narrow qualifications to be Champagne sparkling wine, or Bourbon whiskey. You can, of course, call any software you want open source regardless if it fits the OSI definition, just like you can call any sparkling wine you want Champagne. It doesn't mean you'd be correct in doing so.

chrisseaton4• 7 years ago

But whiskeys and wines have to fit narrow qualifications to be Champagne sparkling wine, or Bourbon whiskey.

Isn't that because there's laws and treaties enforcing that? For example the US isn't a signatory to any treaties about Champagne so you do get American wine labelled as Champagne in American shops I believe.

There's no law enforcing the OSI's definition of 'open source'.

exolymph• 7 years ago

Those are just protectionist legalities.

rangerpolitic4• 7 years ago

Like all symbols (e.g., statues, logos, sounds, buildings, etc.), there is no innate meaning for words. We are completely free to attach any arbitrary meaning to a word and use it to convey that meaning. That doesn't mean it is without problems and that's the case with open source.

The existing community in which open source is used largely understands "open" to refer to freedom in the broadest means possible. That's the word's denotative sense. It also carries a strong connotative sense in which it is viewed as a positive for business and society.

What's happening is that you have a small group of people who desire to benefit from the connotative sense of the word while changing denotative sense. That creates problems when they're not clear that they don't mean open source in the same way that it's understand commonly amongst the technical community.

It's underhanded and dishonest.

If they want to create a quasi-open source license, that's fine. They simply should be very clear that it's not open source in the traditional/common sense.

zzzcpan2• 7 years ago

Common meaning behind open source is not actually OSI approved open source and never was by the way. OSI, for example, rejects public domain, while for pretty much everyone else public domain is open source. Broad freedom is even trickier to talk about. FSF, for example, built an entire ideology on the meaning of freedom.

sparkie8• 7 years ago

Copyleft licenses are not necessarily "free in the broadest sense possible." They place certain restrictions on what you must do with software you publish which contains code licensed under such licenses. There are several such copyleft licenses approved by the OSI which clearly do not fit your all-encompassing freedom definition. You also have approved license which place restrictions on use of branding and trademarks, and no effort is made by OSI to restrict licenses to those which also include a patent grant.

So if someone creates another kind of copyleft license, which is not quite the same as say, the GPL, but has the same spirit of the GPL, including a patent grant, then are they not allowed to use the term "open source" or "free software" because a protectionist organization declares itself the arbiter?

ummonk• 7 years ago

The existing community in which open source is used largely understands "open" to refer to freedom in the broadest means possible.

And yet nobody disputes that copyleft licenses, not just permissive licenses, are open source.

apexal• 7 years ago

I'm proud to see an organization I'm active in, the Rensselaer Center for Open Source, on this list! Just last week a representative from the OSI came to my university (RPI) to talk about what it means to be OSI affiliate members.

chrisseaton4• 7 years ago

Isn't this what trademarks are for? If they want to enforce what the meaning of a term is in a a given domain they could come up with a new term and trademark it.

sparkie8• 7 years ago

Yes, but open source was already used before the OSI came about. I don't think anyone knows exactly who coined it and when. OSI is trademarked, and they are in their rights to defend that trademark, but that obviously does not extend to "open source." This statement is an attempted protectionist power grab to assert control over the term and prevent competing initiatives from using it.

rmmm4• 7 years ago

It's pretty well known who coined open source and why. It's also known shortly thereafter OSI started protecting the definition.

https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source...

https://opensource.org/history

tzs• 7 years ago

It may have been used before they did in the context of computer software, but if so such usage seems to have been very sparse. I tried to research it once, a long time ago, and my recollection is that I found maybe one or two possible examples on Usenet but nothing else.

wmf3• 7 years ago

The term "open source" is not a trademark and at this point it probably cannot be trademarked by anyone. In uncontroversial cases people are happy to let the OSI be the arbiter of open sourceness but in controversial cases people tend to decide that OSI doesn't control the meaning of open source.

zzzcpan2• 7 years ago

OSI actually attempted to trademark "open source" and failed.

chrisseaton4• 7 years ago

That's my point. It isn't a trademark. They should come up with something new that is. 'OSI Approved' would be fine.

sparkie8• 7 years ago

In uncontroversial cases, it is not that people let the OSI be the arbiter, but rather, they have no need to argue with the OSI about the use of the term in those cases because their goals are aligned. The controversial cases make this clear - many people do not see the OSI as the authority on the term, and never have.

geofft5• 7 years ago

They're not trying to enforce it in the sense of sending the police after you for misusing it. They're just trying to establish that it has one well-accepted definition.

sparkie8• 7 years ago

The definition is not well-accepted. For example, why does the AGPL get a free pass but the SSPL does not?

When it comes down to it, there are just a bunch of people who make arbitrary decisions about what is to be included.

But what they include should not matter to you. You should not be making your decision to use software based on whether or not the OSI approved it - unless you don't have the means or expertise to decipher the specific requirements of a language and are more than happy to take the word of this organization for it.

Ultimately, the OSI is a protectionist organization which is attempting to prevent a competing organization from using the term "open source" because they don't quite agree on some subtle details that an innovative licensor has chosen to attempt to gain approval of. Whether they gain approval is for the market to decide - not the OSI.

colechristensen4• 7 years ago

Definitions don't belong to committees.

"open source" isn't a trademarked or otherwise protected phrase, it does not belong to the OSI, it is not synonymous with (has an)"open source initiative Approved License".

Coining a term or being among the first to use it does not mean that term belongs to you.

There are many people that disagree with the OSI about what "open source" means, and that is what it takes for a definition.

There is a certain irony in the OSI talking about open source like they own it.

rangerpolitic4• 7 years ago

Coining a term or being among the first to use it does not mean that term belongs to you.

I wish that people would understand this not only in the context of definitions but also in the context of culture. Neither definitions nor culture belong to anyone. At the same time, they "belong" to everyone.

colechristensen4• 7 years ago

Self-replying to nail down what I strongly disagree with:

Can I call my program "Open Source" even if I don't use an approved license?
Please don't do that. If you call it "Open Source" without using an approved license, you will confuse people. This is not merely a theoretical concern — we have seen this confusion happen in the past, and it's part of the reason we have a formal license approval process. See also our page on license proliferation for why this is a problem.

This is from their FAQ and an example of the OSI explicitly acting like they own "open source". I am fine with proprietary terms being owned and controlled, for example "USB". I am not fine with organizations trying to usurp the language to try to push forward their agenda regardless of their intentions (and generally I approve of the mission of OSI)

LamaOfRuin2• 7 years ago

They're not usurping it. They literally created it as a term (and "brand") rather than simply two words. They weren't granted a trademark, so their creation of it has no legal weight, but that doesn't mean they can't claim authority over what it means, and ask that their original intent be respected.

dragonwriter3• 7 years ago

This is from their FAQ and an example of the OSI explicitly acting like they own "open source"

No, if they were acting like they owned the term, they’d say “No, and we'll take coercive action to stop you if you do.”

What they are actually saying is (in short) “Please don't, experience has shown it causes confusion.”

benatkin• 7 years ago

They don't own the trademark, but they could have, had the USPTO ruled differently. Much less exclusive terms, like Apple, have been trademarked.

To many in the open source community, myself included, when we hear open source we think of the open source initiative, opensource.org, and/or their logo.

I'm not bothered by your viewpoint. Sure, we don't own the trademark, but to me, open source is and long has been the culture that emerged out of the early days of building an open source operating system (Linux, GNU/Linux, *BSD, etc).

If you want "open source" to be a meaningless term, I'd first suggest trying to convince OSI to part ways with opensource.org. I don't think it's for sale, but maybe you could infiltrate the organization. Many have tried.

geofft5• 7 years ago

English is not a prescriptive language: there is no committee with whom you can register a meaning.

But that means that meanings are determined by how people use the term, and the OSI is claiming that what people generally mean by the term is the OSD, and backing up that claim with signatories.

It's of course possible to choose to mean something different by "kilogram." Nobody has trademarked the word. But the word nonetheless has a clear and well-accepted meaning, and someone who uses "kilogram" to mean "the weight of a liter of water from my tap right now" is using a nonstandard and potentially confusing definition. That's the point of their analogy.

colechristensen4• 7 years ago

It's of course possible to choose to mean something different by "kilogram." Nobody has trademarked the word. But the word nonetheless has a clear and well-accepted meaning, and someone who uses "kilogram" to mean "the weight of a liter of water from my tap right now" is using a nonstandard and potentially confusing definition. That's the point of their analogy.

This is a very bad example.

If I were to go to your grocery store and buy a kilogram of apples from you, but your "kilogram" was a weight invented by you, you would be breaking the law. More or less every country has legal definitions of weights and measures. They are not "common usage" but very strictly prescribed.

OSI is trying hard to prescribe the meaning of a term they have no rights to.

mindcrime4• 7 years ago

It's not a "de jure" standard, but it is a "de facto" standard. In every meaningful sense, the OSD is the definition of "Open Source".

type02• 7 years ago

There are many people that disagree with the OSI about what "open source" means, and that is what it takes for a definition.
There is a certain irony in the OSI talking about open source like they own it.

They defined it, there are many people that disagree that the Earth is spherical -it's still doesn't make it true.

wmf3• 7 years ago

Arguably OSI took the DFSG, which was understood to only apply to Debian, renamed it the OSD, and then tried to apply it to the whole OSS movement.

massonpj3• 7 years ago

"Definitions don't belong to committees"
"[...]irony in the OSI talking about open source like they own it[...]"

The definition (and it's authority/legitimacy) belongs to (i.e. owned by) a community of contributors, very much like an open source project, not a committee (i.e. the OSI Board of Directors). Currently there are 508 members in the OSI's "License Discuss", and 266 members in the "License Review" communities. These are open to anyone to join, and participate in. These groups define "open source" as expressed trough licensing.

The Open Source Definition, as well as OSI Approved Open Source Licenses have been modified through the consensus of these communities (e.g. the addition of a 10th criterion to the OSD, and work around open source license proliferation).

(Full disclosure, I am currently the General Manager at the OSI).

henryfjordan• 7 years ago

Without this single, standard definition of "open source," software development as we know it would not be possible. There is no trust in a world where anyone can invent their own definition for open source, and without trust there is no community, no collaboration, and no innovation.

Are they saying I can't trust what I read in the license files of a project? This is beyond hubris...

Iolaum• 7 years ago

The problem is when the readme file (or other marketing speak) says open source, so people think it's something that gives them the rights that OSI approved licences give, and then the license file says something else. For example, MongoDb's SSPL v1 or licenses with the commons clause.

People are free to use whatever license they want. They should own up to it though instead of trying to paint their license as something else.

kklimonda2• 7 years ago

Reading through new licenses, and getting them approved by your legal departament isn't fun to anyone, plus some licenses are very subtly non-free - see the JSON license with its "do no evil" clause as an example.

mithr• 7 years ago

Are they saying I can't trust what I read in the license files of a project?

That's not quite what they're saying. They're asking what's stopping anyone from claiming their project is "open source", but actually meaning something most people won't recognize as such -- for example, "my project is open source because its source code is public. But if you want to legally do anything with it other than look, you have to pay me."

If there isn't a standardized definition, someone can claim the above, and all you could really argue is that their definition of "open source" is different from yours (and they'll probably ask "who made you the arbiter of what's open and what's not?"). Once there is a standardized definition, the position instead becomes "your definition doesn't meet the international standard", which is a much weightier argument.

As for hubris -- in much the same way that even with an international definition for something like a kilogram, nothing stops you from creating your own, different measurement, and claiming you're selling stuff "by your own measure of kilogram" to whoever will buy it, there will never be anything stopping you from creating your own definition of "open source" and carefully defining it in a license file. It's just that if that definition differs from the standardized one, developers will either have to carefully read your license (or have their lawyers do that), or choose to use a project with a standard license that's already been vetted a thousand times over.

brandmeyer• 7 years ago

I suggest that you read through the archives of the debian-legal mailing list to see how far the rabbit hole can go. Custom licenses are frequently fraught with problems that make them non-free by the DFSG (which also happens to be the template for the Open Source Definition).

From from extreme hubris, it is a valuable service that they provide to the community. Thanks to them, its easy and practical to pick from a spectrum of open source licenses that reflect your views as an author. Its also easy for you as a consumer to evaluate the usability of some piece of source code when the author chose from that same spectrum.

geofft5• 7 years ago

"Trust" goes beyond just reading licenses. Actually I would say that if I have to hire a lawyer to read license files to tell me what is meant and how it's enforceable, I have quite the opposite of trust.

"Trust" means that members of a community generally presume good faith in each other (because of a record of past successful interactions, not because they believe in presuming good faith as a virtue) and believes they're working towards the same goal. This requires having some form of shared values. You don't need trust to implement a system of contract law, which is all you need if you're reading licenses. But then you merely have a civil society, not a community.

"Trust" means not only that you can expect other people to write open-source code but you can expect them to share the belief that writing open-source code is valuable.

kazinator3• 7 years ago

"Open source" is just English words you can look up in a dictionary; it can mean any number of things.

If we disconnect one end of a field effect transistor, the one opposite to the "drain", we have an "open source".

mindcrime4• 7 years ago

If we disconnect one end of a field effect transistor, the one opposite to the "drain", we have an "open source".

True, but totally irrelevant here.

Context matters.

kazinator3• 7 years ago

Context matters.

That's actually the point. In the context of software source code, "open source" still doesn't mean whatever these guys say it means.

Only in the very narrow context of their specific organization and affiliates.

mindcrime4• 7 years ago

Count us (Fogbeam Labs) in! The OSD is the de facto definition of Open Source, and we're proud to back the OSI on this.

porpoisely• 7 years ago

A noble effort, but futile in my opinion. Trying to get the tech world to agree on something is like trying to herd cats. It's not going to work. What's to prevent another organization(s) from "forking" their own definition of open source. And good luck trying to get the differing major license camps ( MIT, GNU, etc ) to agree on anything.

kklimonda2• 7 years ago

So this is yet another comments thread where I see numerous people not agreeing with OSI definition of "Open Source" and it got me wondering again, has there always been such a sentiment, or is it a recent one? I don't recall seeing it as much even a couple of years ago. Has there been some anti-OSI movement, and if so is there somewhere I could read about arguments against OSI? It seems most comments seem to be boiling down to "you are not going to tell me what I can do" but that's perhaps unfair.

LamaOfRuin2• 7 years ago

It's not new.

OSI was spawned as a more business friendly reaction to the "moralizing" of Richard Stallman and other "Free Software" believers. There will always be argument over definitional identities, especially of basically philosophical movements.

massonpj3• 7 years ago

As mentioned elsewhere, the original debates around "open source", as both a term and movement, centered around "free" vs. "open", or the value, benefits, ethics, etc. of copyleft/reciprocal licenses vs. permissive licensing. Interestingly, while there is no trademark protection (i.e. ownership) of the term "free software", the founders of the OSI, recognized and honored that label's definition as described by RMS, GNU, and FSF--as well as their authority as stewards--and created another label, "open source software". There are many, many contemporaneous documents that reflect this debate.

Today, I believe those issues have been resolved (i.e. clearly understood), with both the free software and open source communities agreeing that both labels and communities support software freedom: to study, use, modify, and redistribute.

I personally feel, and in my experience as General Manager at the OSI, there is an increase of people/organizations raising issues over the open source label, it's definition, and the OSI's role as steward. My sense is, as open source software and communities that create it--both non-profit foundations and businesses--realize the benefits of collaborative co-creation, and see greater success, more people/organizations are enticed. You can see this in other "open" initiatives like "Open Content", "Open Source Hardware", "Open Data", "Open Educational Resources", etc. Clearly there is value in communities of practice collaborating around shared interests, and indeed these communities can operate in a variety of ways to generate artifacts defined by those communities, e.g. what is "open content"?

As a corollary, success has raised the profile of open source projects and developers, so there are simply more discussions happening now across more communities. When free and open source software was less popular (with the debate focused on, how can this be good if it is developed by non-professionals, is unsecured, poor quality, etc.), there simply may have been fewer discussions.

Now that "open source has won", many may be debating what about open source makes it a winner, and thus, what is open source.

Affirmation of the Open Source Definition

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