How Open is Open Source Really?

jg21 writes to tell us that several industry leaders have chimed in with a response to Nat Torkington's recent piece "Is 'Open Source' Now Completely Meaningless". In the original piece Torkington raised the question of whether the term "open source" had lost any meaning because of companies that use the label yet largly restrict user interaction. Sun's Simon Phpps chimed in by stating: "I see open source as a term relevant to the way communities function and I'd support the reunification of the terms 'Free' and 'open source' around the concept of Free software being developed in open source communities. On that basis it's not dead."

Re:Open Source means you get the code, that's it

[morgan_greywolf]

Except that you don't get to define what open source means. The Open Source Initiative has that luxury. IIRC, they went to great lengths to differentiate Open Source and Free Software as two distinct entities. Open Source means you get the code and nothing more. No guarantee that you can redistribute...

You just contradicted yourself. You might want to go and read the Open Source Definition [opensource.org], which does state that if a license is to be OSI certified, it must allow modification and redistribution under the same license.

Don't be confused!

[SpaceLifeForm]

Open source != Free Software

GPL software is Free, as in libre.

Open source is not necessarily Free, as in libre.

Re:Open Source means you get the code, that's it

[CastrTroy]

This comes down to the question of just how open do you have to be. Some people say GPL isn't enough, because it restricts how you can redistribute the code, and only think that BSD like licenses are really open source. Seems to me like your employer was trying to do the right thing, but giving the source code to the people who bought the program, but didn't want to have the code available to everyone, just those who had paid for the product. It's just another level of open source. It may not be as open as GPL or BSD, but it's way more open than MS Windows, where you don't get any option to view or change the source at all. Even MS has stuff they tout as open source, called shared source, but that's about as least open as you get, while still getting to look at the code.

Re:Open Source means you get the code, that's it

[timster]

Nonsense. The GPL doesn't give any rights to persons who do not obtain the software. So if you do work for a customer and distribute it only to them, including the source and redistribution rights, it meets the definition of Free Software. This has NEVER meant that you are obligated to send the code to anyone who asks.

Sure, your customer has the right to distribute the code if they wish, but even if they do, they are only obligated to provide source code to the parties that they distribute the software to directly.

Re:Open Source means you get the code, that's it

[atamido]

Open Source Definition, which does state that if a license is to be OSI certified, it must allow modification and redistribution under the same license.

I've met a number of people that make the distinction between "open source" and "source available". "Source available" simply means that you can view the source code, but not redistribute it, or not compile and distribute the binaries.

Re:Open Source means you get the code, that's it

[init100]

Seems to me like your employer was trying to do the right thing, but giving the source code to the people who bought the program, but didn't want to have the code available to everyone, just those who had paid for the product. It's just another level of open source. It may not be as open as GPL or BSD

Actually, the GPL allows distributing the source to your customers (i.e. recipients of your software) only, and does not require distribution to anyone else. Of course, the GPL requires that your customers can redistribute to anyone they like, which may not have been the case here.

who invented open source?

[falconwolf]

Actually, SCO [slashdot.org] (back when it was called Caldera) invented Open Source back in 1996 [google.com]. Yes, that's before the OSI thing, though after the foundation of the FSF.

The Tech Model Railroad Club [mit.edu] of MIT had open source software as early as the 1960s and early 1970s beating out SCO by a long shot. The first computer game, Spacewar [duke.edu], came out in 1962 as a result of many programmers' contributions in an open manner. They used to compeat to see who could come up with a nifty hack, something that was considered impossible, never thought of, or was able to shave a few lines out of a program. Those programmer were amoung the first computer hackers and followed the Hacker ethic [antionline.com].

Falcon