Open Source Is Discrimination | Hacker News Reader

Open Source Is Discrimination

writing.kemitchell.com

45 pointsnikivi28 comments

That's a clickbait title if I've ever seen one.

> After all, software could not be both open and closed.

It turns out software can be both open and closed, and it's a good approach IMHO: the software creator can provide an open source license and a closed source license. Then users can choose the license that's best for their purposes.

This approach is currently playing out with some for-profit software companies that want to offer open source to end users, yet don't want to enable direct competitors (e.g. Elastic vs. Amazon) or do want to enable for-pay customers to bypass sharing work (e.g. I write GPL software, and one of my regulated-industry customers prefers to pay for a proprietary license rather than use GPL).

Exactly. A lot of the whining can be avoided by a dual AGPL3 (maybe GPL3) plus proprietary "call for a quote and contract negotiations" license. Most big cloud shops will avoid AGPL, so they will pay, the rest will be as happy with AGPL as with BSD or Apache.

Mostly agreed but in the case of Elastic against Amazon that would not have helped much.

Amazon has no issues contributing back and could probably cope with AGPL. They don't need a advantage in features, they can just destroy any competition with their market advantages.

So AGPL is a good first step but maybe we need even stricter license against monopolistic corporations.

That is not open source vis-à-vis closed source; that is copyleft vis-à-vis permissive both of which are open source.

That's not what one usually mean by the dual licenses

A huge blogpost just to rant that neither OSI nor a large part of the public think that the license he likes to use to discriminate across lines of businesses could be labeled "Open Source".

Just call your thing "source available" or make up your own special club and stop complaining you don't get the same treatment than licenses that don't discriminate people.

Or you know, decide who has to/doesn't have to share code without caring about what the product that's building upon your software is about or who's building it. Like the rest of us who actually care about Open Source beyond using it as a PR tool for your business.

I haven't informed myself too much so please call out if/where I'm wrong.

In my mind the super quick version of this entire thing seems to be:

- GPL requires you to publicize your changes if you distribute the software.

- SSPL is more or less the same as GPL, but also requires you to publicize your changes if you offer the software as a service to others.

To me it really seems as if SSPL is a more modern GPL, fit for the SaaS world.

What am I missing?

SSPL:

> “Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available.

That's a lot more than "your changes" and is impossible to meet if you use any commercial software or a service provided by others pretty much anywhere in your stack.

Oh, yeah.

I can't imagine publishing the entire source code of your entire stack even being possible.

What if you have some 3rd party vendor software in there? Are you required to publish their source too?

I feel like that's the point. Make free software be attractive to use, then attach riders such that it has network effects. That way, user freedom is maximized. It's taking the long-term view that it is better to work towards having a free software ecosystem, rather than just having a particular software be widely used as soon as possible.

If that would apply to everyone I could see that, but the narrow(-ish) limitation on people offering it as a service IMHO makes it clear that it's not for maximum user freedom, but for "don't compete with the owning companies service product, we make that incredibly painful, to the point of impossible, compared to everything else"

> In the new manner of speaking, this means open source has “won”. Nearly all software is open source, in the sense that it builds on open source, uses open source tools, relies on open source infrastructure, and loudly proclaims how awesome all this free stuff is for business.

I prefer FOSS vastly, yet the substantial majority of the software I interact with daily is nonfree (not "open source" in the parlance of TFA).

Cars, telephones, Uber, App Store, Google, YouTube, streaming services, payment cards, cameras, thermostats, light bulbs... almost all software is proprietary these days.

I've always disliked the term "open source" because it's vague and nobody can agree on a definition. I think we'd all spend a lot less time arguing over definitions if people just used more specific descriptions like "copyleft", "source available", "permissive license"

There is a definition by OSI who invented the term as a commercial-sounding touch to free software as defined by the FSF. OSI also certifies licenses as compliant with the definition. They also invented the term and the definition.

So I wholly disagree on the vagueness and nonexistence of a definition. There are some minor points where people sometimes argue bitterly, e.g. in the differences between DFSG free and OSS. But overall, there is a consensus that has been established decades ago. Just some players nowadays want to muddy the waters with some lies about there being doubt for their own purposes. Which is what the article is writing about.

The term "open source" is used every day to refer to software that is not released under an OSI approved license. I'd bet that 99%+ of the people who use the phrase have never even been to OSI's website.

The existence of OSI's definition doesn't mean that colloquial use follows that definition.

You are moving goalposts. There may be people who misuse the term. But that doesn't mean it isn't well-defined or agreed-upon by a majority.

I'm not moving the goalposts. If a sizable number of people use the term a different way, that makes the term vague. You will find people arguing about the definition on every corner of the internet, and in many professional environments too. It is mind-numbingly common for people to call source-available software "open source"... dictionaries even recognize this usage: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source

There are many, many people who misuse terms every day.

For an example similar to "Open Source", people misuse "Public Domain". It's not that the legal community is going to change the actual definition to accommodate colloquial use...

The "Open Source Definition"[0] published by the Open Source Initiative[1] on the opensource.org website, written by the people who pretty much coined the term in the late '90s, isn't definitive or specific enough for you?

[0] https://opensource.org/docs/osd

[1] https://opensource.org/

My comment wasn't about me or my understanding. I am saying that people do not universally agree with, recognize, or are even aware of OSI's definition.

> I am saying that people do not universally agree with, recognize, or are even aware of OSI's definition.

I also noticed it among non technical people. That's too bad and actually doesn't matter because OSI is the one who has the trademark on it: https://opensource.org/trademark-guidelines

edit: changed "copyright" to "trademark"

Common words or phrases like "open source" are not copyrightable on their own. Copyrights protect "original works of authorship" -- i.e. creative works.

Words or phrases that are identifiers used in commerce are protected by an entirely different type of IP law: trademarks. You are linking to OSI's trademark guidelines, of which "Open Source" is not one, per the page you linked.

My bad, meant to write trademark off course

> the use of the term "Open Source" is used solely in reference to software distributed under OSI Approved Licenses.

so isn't the "open source" a trademark?

No. As per the first sentence:

> OSI, Open Source Initiative, and OSI logo ("OSI Logo"), either separately or in combination, are hereinafter referred to as "OSI Trademarks" and are trademarks of the Open Source Initiative.

They are saying they won't permit you to refer to "OSI", "Open Source Initiative", or use their logo unless you also follow their definition of "open source".

You can call anything "open source". You can't call anything "OSI open source".

In their trademark guidelines they say: "Never use or register any trademarks that are confusingly similar to, or a play on, the OSI or OSI Logo." As a listed example it's unacceptable to say: "Open Source Project."

It's fair for the OSI to try and protect branding of FOSS as increasing user freedoms. I think ethical source licenses are doing the same within a broader human rights framework (others may disagree). SSPL on the other hand is decreasing freedoms without question, you can't start a competing service without onerous disclosures that have little do with the software in question. Other licenses in the same vein are even more explicit in their discontent of any contributions, but development is done in the open. It's fair to call the later "source available" which is an accurate representation of what they are doing or make up another name like the ethical source people did.

With my "I'm not a native speaker, but I'm a pedant" hat on, I feel like the author doesn't seem to distinguish between two of the meanings of the word discrimination[1]:

> 1. (Sociology) unfair treatment of a person, racial group, minority, etc; action based on prejudice

> 3. the ability to see fine distinctions and differences

It's fine to make distinctions between FOSS fearing developers and evil source developers, but I'm pretty sure that's not what the OSI means.

[1] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/discrimination

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