OSI To Crack Down On "Open Source" Abusers

munchola sends us word that the Open Source Initiative is getting tough on any vendors who claim to be open source despite not actually using a license approved by the OSI. In his blog post, OSI president Michael Tiemann writes: "Enough is enough. Open Source has grown up. Now it is time for us to stand up. I believe that when we do, the vendors who ignore our norms will suddenly recognize that they really do need to make a choice: to label their software correctly and honestly, or to license it with an OSI-approved license that matches their open source label."

Comments

OSI forcing licenses?

[Lilo-x]

why should they force companies to stick to a license, isn't this just OSI nearing closer to the same type of control corporation impose on their software

if there is a such a thing as true OSI then why do we need licenses? open source = you can see the source I don't think the definition should have to apply any further than that if companies dont want to

Open Source License Monopoly...

[mulvane]

So my license I make up for the hell of it with my terms that still allows anyone to view and audit my code if not approved by OSI means I can't market open source? Even though my code is open? Am I missing something about the word open?

Re:Is "Open Source" a registered trademark?

[morgan_greywolf]

Yes, but interestingly enough, not by OSI. OSI owns Open Source Initiative Approved License mark and the 'OSI certified' mark.

IANAL, but I don't think OSI has a leg to stand on here.

Open Source is a specific kind of software

[Bruce Perens]

Open Source software has licensing that conforms to the Open Source Definition and in addition the source code must be available. It is not just anything you think of. Long ago, OSI decided to abandon registration of "Open Source" alone, in my opinion on bad advice from their then legal counsel. However, it's still a common law trademark. But regardless of its trademark status, the community should not tolerate just anything being called Open Source, or you will find Microsoft using it for stuff that includes no freedom to modify, etc.

Bruce

Badgeware is the problem

[Bruce Perens]

Badgeware, software that requires that you place a badge on your web site, is the problem. SugarCRM is one of the offenders.

In composing the Open Source Definition, my aim was that there would be NO legal burden upon users at all. A user should be able to put OSI Certified Open Source software on a computer and go, without reading the license. That's one reason the OSD prohibited the then-popular "Educational Use Only" provision. Requiring the user to perform something - like transmit an advertising badge - is similarly unacceptable because it would place a legal burden on the user.

In practice, issues like patents and even Sarbanes-Oxley create a legal load for some users, but that is not under our developer's control. We had a license back then that imposed an attribution-related legal load on distributors: the original Apache license required attribution in some advertising. It was awkward, there was no way to implement it automatically, and it would have presented a scaling problem if hundreds of authors required attribution in - for example - an operating system distribution's advertising. The community eventually convinced Apache to drop the advertising provision.

That old Apache license has obvious parallels to more current "badgeware" proposals, but badgeware isn't a new issue for Open Source. Almost a decade ago, I reviewed the first Zope license for SPI. Zope's original submission required a web badge. I convinced their investor, Hadar Pedhazur, to make that a nice request rather than a requirement. Most people honored the request. The GPL contained an attribution provision, and still does. OSD was written to fit GPL. But the burden of the GPL's requirement was only upon developers, and it was the minimum necessary amount of attribution to communicate the author identification and the fact that the user had rights.

A developer can be especially irked when someone else labels that developers work as his own. But protecting that developer's business and taking the commercial value out of such relabeling does not require attribution. It could be done using any share-and-share-alike (GPL-like) license that closes the ASP loophole. But it's still fair for a developer to want to be attributed. I think the minimal practical goals for attribution are:

1) The developer should be able to find it.
and
2) The developer should be able to show to others.

This does not mean that the developer should require others to blow his advertising horn. Some companies already use attribution that isn't visible unless you are looking for it - it's embedded in HTML comments. In contrast, the draft Affero flavor of GPL 3 closes the ASP loophole by implementing the minimal necessary requirement for a developer to preserve a visible message informing the user of their rights. The visibility is to implement a separate goal of FSF: that users appreciate their rights and learn to demand them. Should OSI approve this new Affero license, or should it ask that FSF - rather than demanding a direct channel to users, search for that information and present the result on its own sites?

Bruce

More than just seeing

[Bruce Perens]

open source = you can see the source

Sigh. I imagine you use some of this Open Source software sometimes. Please try to get your head around the fact that it would not be possible for such software to exist and for folks like you to benefit from it, unless it was developed. And it would not be developed without a developer community, and that community would not be able to do their work unless they had the right to modify and redistribute the software. Thus, Open Source must be more than just visible source code - it has to include the right to distribute and modify, and it also needs the right for you to use it. So, that's 4 things - source, use privilege, distribution privilege, modification privilege and there's a bit more. Years ago, I wrote down what was necessary for software to be Open Source, and OSI uses that Open Source Definition to classify licenses. It is not an arbitrary thing.

Bruce

Re:More than just seeing

[CowboyBob500]

Years ago, I wrote down what was necessary for software to be Open Source, and OSI uses that Open Source Definition to classify licenses. It is not an arbitrary thing.

Maybe I've missed something, but can you explain exactly where you and the OSI get the authority to define what the words "open source" mean?

Bob

Re:More than just seeing

[CowboyBob500]

Sorry, but I don't recognise yours or the OSIs authority in this matter. Also, I agree with the grandparent, open source to me means that the source code is available, nothing more, and nothing less. The term does not define that certain freedoms are available with the source code, indeed it cannot given that even under the OSI approved licenses those freedoms vary wildly. In essence, the only constant I see amongst even the official definition is that the code is available - therefore that is what the term means to me (and I assume most other people outside of the "community").

Bob

Re:Is "Open Source" a registered trademark?

[Russ Nelson]

One always hopes so, but the misunderstand of people here is rather depressing. It's as if your hard work and our hard work in promoting Open Source has vanished. We're like the scaffolding that created the arch. People look at the arch and say "Oh, how beautiful" and forget that somebody had to work hard to create it.

Excepting, of course, that the analogy breaks down because people are trying to disassemble the arch and take it home, only without the scaffolding, there's no way to put it back together again. Break "Open Source" and you'll let the proprietary software vendors call ANYTHING open source.

Re:Is "Open Source" a registered trademark?

[Bruce Perens]

Well, I suggest you not get too depressed about what you are reading here, because you have astroturfing from the badgeware camp, and the generally anti-Free-Software camp, and on top of that just plain ignorance. Remember that no age field is given on Slashdot postings, and this is not the community site we had in the 90's - it was morphed to a "Geek Culture" site to make more money by the admission of its own editors.

There are lots of folks who appreciate what we have done and understand it a hell of a lot better than you are seeing here. They are in government, and industry, and everywhere. I do more public speaking than you (I'm in Europe for that at the moment) and see a lot more of them face-to-face.

Bruce

Re:Is "Open Source" a registered trademark?

[Bruce Perens]

Well, I wasn't accusing you. I am convinced that you really hold your opinion. But I am also convinced that there are real astroturfers out there. Even my own employer once in a while has a "Please put digg points on this" message go out to its "everyone" list. And I have heard from PR agencies who sell the fact that they can put multiple comments on Slashdot.

Thanks

Bruce