How Open Does Open Source Need to be?

mjhuot writes "Doug MacEachern, CTO of Hyperic and creator of mod_perl, responds to criticism by Tarus Balog, a maintainer of OpenNMS, that his company's recent open source announcement is nothing but a marketing ploy. It is starting the debate on whether or not just releasing some code qualifies an application as 'open source.'"

Comments

Use Free Software instead

[Ckwop]

Open source means you can read the source, much like an "open book exam" means you can read the book. The correct term for software that belongs to the community is Free Software. With Free Software, you are guarenteed to have the four fundamental software freedoms. With "Open Source", there is no such guarentee.

By my definition, even Windows is Open Source. In principle, I can view the source code to Windows. It's difficult and I have to sign a whole bunch of documents but I could do it with sufficient patience. This is why I don't like Open Source as a term; it is far too misleading. In fact, it doesn't actually mean anything other than the fact there is a mechanism by which you can see the source code that doesn't involve getting a court-order.

In contrast, the term Free Software has a very precise meaning and really should be trade-marked by the FSF. Then the FSF could only issue licenses to se the trade-mark where the software is licensed that protects the four freedoms. This way, companies couldn't profit from the name unless they labelled their products correctly.

Simon

Re:Use Free Software instead

[eln]

Open Source is basically FSF-lite and was invented to make the whole Free Software thing more palatable to businesses. Unfortunately, as with many things made more appealing to business, the actual ideals of Free Software were utterly lost in the process.

Free Software is about sharing. Open Source is about curiosity. I can do what I want with a truly Free piece of software, including repackaging and selling it. With Open Source, all I usually get to do is look at the code (curiosity), and if I see anything I want to fix, I usually have to give my fix back to the original owner.

The power of Free Software is the idea of community development. When you force everyone into restrictive licenses to see your code, you are not only missing the point, but you're losing the single biggest advantage in opening your source code in the first place. At that point, it becomes a marketing scheme and nothing more.

Unfortunately, most software companies are built around Intellectual Property. Trying to sell an idea to them whose central tenet is giving that Intellectual Property away without a lot of restrictive licenses is not going to get very far. So, in order to placate them, we come up with this Open Source idea, which may win the battle but loses the war.

Re:Use Free Software instead

[sootman]

The problem with the term 'Free Software' is it's very hard to hear the difference between a capital F and a lowercase f. And the FSF will never, ever get a trademark on 'free software' because there is absolutely no reason not to call zero-cost software 'free'--in English, anyway. If anything, they could go with a term like 'freedomware.'

BTW, you're using the RMS definition of 'Free' but your own definition of 'Open Source.' By picking and choosing which definitions I'm going to use, I could just as easily say that there's lots of free software on download.com but that Windows very much isn't open source. Intentionally adding to the confusion doesn't help.

Re:Use Free Software instead

[trentblase]

Wouldn't that be "Software Libre"? Anyways, I prefer "Open software"

Re:Use Free Software instead

[Infonaut]

Free Software is about sharing. Open Source is about curiosity. I can do what I want with a truly Free piece of software, including repackaging and selling it. With Open Source, all I usually get to do is look at the code (curiosity), and if I see anything I want to fix, I usually have to give my fix back to the original owner.

There are something like 60 OSI-certified Open Source licenses, so discussing all of them as if they were the same only leads to confusion. In fact, the GPL is an OSI-certified Open Source license.

Also, Stallman's arguments about the GPL providing more freedom than other licenses aren't shared by everyone. The BSD license and other academic licenses have no reciprocality requirement. In that sense they are more free than the GPL, which has a strong reciprocity requirement. One interpretation I've heard is that the GPL reinforces community freedom, while the BSD license reinforces individual freedom.

Open Source - Free Software

[gentimjs]

If its "Open Source" than I, either a paying or non-paying customer, can get the source and re-compile it on my own.
If its Free -and- Open Source, than some anonymous 12 year old can get the source, and re-compile it, without any licensing fees or issues.
If its BSD/GPL-style-free, than said 12 year old can also re-distribute without sending in signed forms or paying anyone.
Where is the confusion?

Re:Open Source - Free Software

[Anonymous Coward]

If its "Open Source" than I, either a paying or non-paying customer, can get the source and re-compile it on my own.

If you check with the guys who actually coined the term open source (www.opensource.org), you would notice that modification and redistribution is a "must" in their book.

If its Free -and- Open Source, than some anonymous 12 year old can get the source, and re-compile it, without any licensing fees or issues.

Same as above, but this time we also have to look at the FSF due to the term Free. They also mandate modification and redistribution.

If its BSD/GPL-style-free, than said 12 year old can also re-distribute without sending in signed forms or paying anyone.

So MPL licensed Firefox, CDDL licensed OpenSolaris and CPL licensed Eclipse are "BSD/GPL-style-free"? Very funny, especially since all those three licenses are also GPL-incompatible.

Where is the confusion?

I think the confusion lies with you.

Here we go

[Billosaur]

So, two heavyweights(?) in the OSS community are going to start having a little war over what "open source" really means, eh? Must be a slow news day.

Open Source is what it is, and how "open" you want your software to be is your business. You can throw the whole thing open to anyone and let talented people take up the challenge to adapt and improve your code, or you can have one set of "open" code and one set of "closed" code, the former being available to anyone, the latter available for a price. No one is under any obligation, in either case, to use your software. If you want to charge for the "closed" version so you can actually make a living, where's the harm in that?

In an ideal world, there would be no secrets. All software would be open and free to roam the Earth. We are a far cry from an ideal world; commerce dominates and servers and bandwidth cost money. Whether your OSS is "open" or "slightly open" doesn't matter much -- if you can't scrape up the cash to keep the lights on and the servers running, it doesn't much matter how cool your software is. All I can say is, leave it alone.

What's in a name?

[Minwee]

If only there had been some sort of definition of open source then maybe we wouldn't have to have to start this debate now.

Shareware

[Rob_Warwick]

I don't get why he's upset about Shareware.

Finally we come to the "shareware" model, which is now really starting to draw my ire. Popularized by SugarCRM, it is a "model" where some of the code is open, but to get the full featured version you have to pay, and the full version is not open. Remember shareware? You download a little app for free that does some things, but if you want to unlock all of the features you send the guy ten bucks? If this software was so good, then why hasn't a community sprung up around the free version and made it better?

Shareware is a limited or expiring version of an application made available for free with the idea that you should be able to try the software before purchasing it. It doesn't have a thing to do with open source, it's just another way of selling your closed source software.

If he wants to be irritated at software that claims to be open source but charges for advanced features, that's fine. But he doesn't need to get annoyed at shareware.

Re:Shareware

[geobeck]

Shareware is a limited or expiring version of an application made available for free with the idea that you should be able to try the software before purchasing it.

That's what the term has come to mean today, but that's really a demo, not Shareware. In the old days, when software was distributed on BBSes, Shareware was fully functional, and included a notice something like "If you find this useful, please send $X to the creator."

With Shareware becoming Demoware, today that model is sometimes called Donationware, or worse, Freeware. It gets even muddier when apps distributed as Freeware are actually a limited version with a beg notice to buy the "full version".

That is total BS. The original distinction between Shareware and Freeware (before Shareware degenerated into Demoware) was that Freeware had no strings attached, period.

Unfortunately, there is little enforcement of these terms. I've contacted Tucows a couple of times about demos masquerading as freeware, and they have moved them, but how many people do that? How many thousands of crippled demos lurk in the Freeware sections of various download sites?

Oh, I'm sorry, what was the question? (/rambling)

Re:Um, use the definition, will ya?

[truthsearch]

From TFBlog: "the source code will be available under the GPL next month."

So I don't see the problem.

Take 'em both with a big grain of salt

[Anthony Boyd]

Well, that's fun. Tarus basically gets on a soapbox and starts lecturing about how he & his company have been doing Open Source for, like, years. That young rascal Doug better listen to Tarus!

Tarus is arguing from authority, if you know what that old debate tactic is. And to be honest, I give him some credence.

But then Doug posts right in the comments, and basically explains that he's been doing Open Source for at least a decade -- before the term existed. And he explains that they're going to follow a GPL model, but they're going to do it on their own timetable, not Tarus's.

Fun.

Having said that, they're both getting things wrong, IMHO. Tarus is ascribing way more to Open Source than he should. For example, he says that a community must exist, contributing actively to the code. This is a fallacy on two points. First, that would immediately disqualify 90% of the projects on SourceForge, which are maintained by a lone hacker. But second, that's more of a Free Software, you-must-develop-software-the-RIGHT-way line of thinking. Open Source does not have these burdens -- it's just a flag people raise to say "you can get this source code." No more.

And Doug clearly jumped the gun. If they're going slow & sure toward the goal of GPL, that's great -- just don't say you have something that you don't yet offer.