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Comment by culi | Hacker News Reader

So it's open-source but not FLOSS

No, open source means a specific thing. You're perhaps thinking of "source available", which means "you can read the source but have to comply to a bunch of stuff"

Not really. A lot of folks, including myself, don't subscribe to the OSI's definition of open-source because it just doesn't match the common usage. Open-source takes many forms, and source available is just one example.

Considering the term originated with them, it's fair to say they get to dictate what it means.

Ah, things would be simpler indeed if words could be dictated.

And they can be -that's why we have dictionaries.

Terms DO have meanings whether contrarians and the argumentative want to acknowledge those meanings or not.

Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. The meaning of terms outside of specific fields like law is based on consensus, not authority. Merriam-Webster doesn't own the English language, and neither does OSI.

If you want to look for consensus, there's no better place than Wikipedia.

> Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

Citations for this sentence (many more in the full article):

- https://books.google.com/books?id=04jG7TTLujoC&pg=PA4#v=onep...

- https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ital/article/view/5105

If you can't modify and distribute your modifications -it's not open source. Anyone who says different is simply incorrect.

Well you can just redefine the meaning of arbitrary words, but the result is that nobody understands your attempts at communication.

I personally prefer to be effective at communication, so I don't just use words to mean something different than what everyone else thinks.

> I personally prefer to be effective at communication, so I don't just use words to mean something different than what everyone else thinks.

And “what everyone else thinks” is mostly different from the OSI definition.

> And “what everyone else thinks” is mostly different from the OSI definition.

Sorry, I meant: "everyone else except 3 or 4 people on ycombinator"

Ask a random person on GitHub how they would define “open source”. I highly doubt they'll mention the OSI.

GitHub itself uses the OSI definition in its ReadME guide to open source:

> Many people think that Open Source simply means availability of the source code of a project, but that does only tell part of the whole story.

> The Open Source Initiative (OSI) provides a commonly accepted definition of what constitutes Open Source. To summarize that, in order to be constituted Open Source,

>> a work has to allow free redistribution,

>> the source code needs to be made available,

>> it must be possible to create further works based on it,

>> there must be no limitations of who may use the work or for what purpose (so something like "no commercial use" or "no military use" won't fly with Open Source),

>> the work must not require an additional license on top of the one it comes with,

>> and finally, the license must not depend on a specific distribution format, technology or presence of other works.

> So, you see, it goes way beyond "the source code is available", in fact, a whole lot more requirements are stated that must be fulfilled in order for a work to really be considered Open Source.

https://github.com/readme/guides/open-source-licensing

Also, GitHub's most starred repo is freeCodeCamp (359k stars - https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/freeCodeCamp). Linked right in the repo's README, freeCodeCamp defines open source as:

> Open Source Software is code that is publicly available for people to view, modify, and share.

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-is-open-source-softwa...

Can you define what exactly open source means in that case?

The majority opinion is the OSI definition and approved licenses but not everyone agrees.

source is open as "open to read, download, and run" (and even modify as soon as you're doing it privately)?

If you can't change it and distribute your changes it's no longer open; pretty much by definition.

Maybe you're thinking of "looky loo" software or something? But if you can't change it and if you're not allowed to share your changes then it is NOT open.

No, open source is a vague term with many different definitions. The open source foundation does not control the english language.

The open source software movement at large does not appreciate companies trying to water down the meaning of "open source" to mean the same thing as "source available" for software, because the term "open source" guarantees users additional rights.

The Open Source Initiative is one of many groups that define open source software as including the right to not only view the source code but also to modify and redistribute it. Others include

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

> of software : having the source code freely available for possible modification and redistribution

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source

New Oxford American Dictionary:

> denoting software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified

https://subscription.packtpub.com/book/web-development/97817...

And the authors of all of the academic literature cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

Great, I'm not a company, just a regular person. Language is defined based on how regular people use it.

Yes, and regular people who use open source software understand that they have the freedom to modify and redistribute open source software. On the other hand, there is a minority that tries to sell proprietary software by misusing a term that originated in the open source community and incorrectly applying it to software that is not open source.

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