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Comment by haeffin | Hacker News Reader

Usually when people speak about open source, they include not only not being able to view the source, but also the possibility to modify, distribute and use it (and modified versions) in the requirements for a license to be labeled an open source license.

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From https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE:

> ...and all such modifications and/or patches may only be used, copied, modified, displayed, distributed, or otherwise exploited with a valid GitLab Enterprise Edition subscription for the correct number of user seats.

You can do all that assuming you have a license for your production users. It's not GNU-style Free Software, sure, but it still feels like Open Source to me.

It also means that if you write some generic code for GitLab EE, like a widget that lets you select git branches or validate some JSON or whatever, you can't reuse that code elsewhere. Copyright in the code you wrote is owned by GitLab, and nobody who's not a GitLab customer can use it.

The ability to reuse code is IMO an important part of both open source and free software.

It is certainly not in compliant with Open Source Initiative's definition, which is the primary meaning of open source in the engineering field. https://opensource.org/osd

Their license says...

Notwithstanding the foregoing, you may copy and modify the Software for development and testing purposes, without requiring a subscription. You agree that GitLab and/or its licensors (as applicable) retain all right, title and interest in and to all such modifications. You are not granted any other rights beyond what is expressly stated herein. Subject to the foregoing, it is forbidden to copy, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell the Software.

> You can do all that assuming you have a license for your production users. It's not GNU-style Free Software, sure, but it still feels like Open Source to me.

I disagree. If you need a paid license in order to redistribute modified copies, that's really not how developers think of open source and it seems disingenuous to conflate the two meanings. It definitely does not "feel" open source.

Even Microsoft understood this difference, which is why back in the day (before current Microsoft practices) they used to have an initiative called "Shared Source" [0]. Notice how they avoided calling it "open source", since this would have contradicted reasonable expectations about the meaning of the term.

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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source

The open source and free software movements came from a time where if you bought a big piece of software - a UNIX system or what-have-you - you would get the source code, and be permitted to modify it and maybe even share your patches with other people who’d also bought the software. That wasn’t the point of either movement at all.

Exactly. For instance Windows source code has been "open source" for about 18 years or so via a license anyone can request. This is still not what most people think of when speaking about open source though.

Edit: They call it Shared Source actually: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/default.aspx

Woah, what? The current version?

Yes, Shared Source, not open source. Microsoft (un)surprisingly understood the differences, back in the day, and avoided the latter term.

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