Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How Open is Open Source Really?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the buzzwords-and-the-companies-that-kill-them dept.

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."

4 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Open Source means you get the code, that's it by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    --
    My blog
  2. Don't be confused! by SpaceLifeForm · · Score: 4, Informative

    Open source != Free Software

    GPL software is Free, as in libre.

    Open source is not necessarily Free, as in libre.

    --
    You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
  3. Re:Open Source means you get the code, that's it by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  4. who invented open source? by falconwolf · · Score: 4, Informative

    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 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, 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.

    Falcon
    --
    Should there be a Law?