Google WebM Calls "Open Source" Into Question

snydeq writes "As open source becomes mainstream, vendors are under pressure to market their offerings using the 'open source' brand to the highest degree possible — a trend that may eventually degrade the meaning of 'open source' as we know it, Savio Rodrigues writes. Witness WebM, which Google has positioned as an open alternative to H.264. After examining the software license, some in the open source community have questioned whether WebM should be classified as open source software. Google did not use an OSI-approved license for WebM, meaning that, at least in theory, WebM cannot be considered open source under the OSD — the 'gold standard' by which many government and business open source policies are defined. Moreover, when prodded for OSI review, Google required that the OSI agree to 'changes to how OSI does licenses' as a precursor to submitting a license for OSI review and approval. 'When Google, one of the largest supporters of open source, goes out and purposefully circumvents the OSI, what signal does this send to other vendors? How important is using an OSI-approved license likely to be in the future if other vendors follow Google's lead?'" An anonymous reader adds: "It turns out that libvpx, Google's VP8 library, isn't compatible with the GPLv2. Google is apparently aware of the problem and working on a solution.

Comments

Dear OSS Zealots

[Sycraft-fu]

Shut Up.

Sincerely,

Everyone.

Seriously, I get real tired to this trying to define "open source" to some narrow group of licenses that you happen to like. It is things like this that lends credence to MS's "viral" claims. Open source is a pretty common sense phrase: If the source is open for others to use, it is open source. Now this might be like the GPL, where it's open but with stipulations that you have to give back. It also might be open like the BSD license (which is what Google's is like) where it's open for use in any way you like, so long as you give credit It might even be public domain, where it is just flat open to do whatever you like with.

Trying to redefine "open source" as only special set of things that you like, often meaning only licenses that force the opening of code by subsequent users, is stupid. Open source means open source, if you can't figure it out then you are being overly pedantic and not helpful.