So open source means only licenses that are most favourable to the big tech monopolists now?
As a user, I can use Elasticsearch just fine with the new license. I can read the code, modify it and use in my own projects.
So it is more difficult for Amazon to use their monopolistic power to build a competing service to the one that is financing Elasticsearch development? Yeah, good stuff.
If the big tech monopolists need something under a permissive license they should pay for its development.
> So open source means only licenses that are most favourable to the big tech monopolists now?
No, open source means the same thing it's always meant since the term was first coined. See the Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition: https://opensource.org/osd.
Now someone will respond "why does OSI get to decide the meaning of the term?" Well, they don't have any _legal_ right to do so, but if you don't accept their definition, does that mean every person gets to come up with their own definition? And if they do, what's the point of using the term?
So it makes sense to take OSI's definition as canonical, the same way the Free Software Foundation's definition of Free Software is generally considered canonical (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html).
Also, to forestall another common reply, I'm not defending Amazon or attacking Elastic. I'm simply trying to define a term that's at the center of this discussion. If we can't agree on the definition, then any discussion of whether a license is open source is moot. The same goes for discussing the impact and value of open source vs non-open licenses.
> No, open source means the same thing it's always meant since the term was first coined. See the Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition: https://opensource.org/osd.
Problem: The OSI did not coin the term 'open source'. OSI partisans claim that Christine Peterson coined the term at a strategy meeting in Palo Alto on 3 February 1998. However, the term and the concept was well known prior to that. Martin Tournoij does a decent enough job of collecting prior citations [1] that go all the way back to 1990. All the OSI did was take an existing philosophy, scribble some new restrictions in crayon, and called it Open Source(tm)(c)(pat. pending).
Honestly, though, I do love it when this comes up. It gives me the opportunity to irk new guys telling them that Lyle Ball, head of public relations at Caldera, has an earlier citation than the OSI in the form of a press-release announcing Caldera OpenDOS[2][3]. :D
[1] https://www.arp242.net/open-source.html
[2] http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html
[3] http://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pc/caldera/OpenDOS.701/license.tx...
What do you hope to achieve with this? Ok, you win, the term "open source" predates the OSI. So what?
Using the term "open source" without any definition is useless. If we can't agree on a definition, it's impossible to know if we're actually talking about the same thing.
I want people to use the OSI definition in order to elevate debates. I'd prefer to skip past definitions to more substantial matters, like whether "open source" (per OSI) is useful. Is it somehow better than closed source code? Is it _ethically_ valuable? Is there some subset of the OSI definition that provides more value than the rest? These are interesting discussions worth having.
Endless debating the meaning of "open source" is a huge waste of time.
Given that OSI is the only body I know of with a clear definition, let's use theirs and move on to more substantial topics.
> Given that OSI is the only body I know of with a clear definition
No, you can also use the common definition of "open source" = "not closed-source" = "not (source unavailable)". Nobody has branded this definition but that doesn't make it any less legitimate. See definition #1 on dictionary.com for "closed-source", or #2 for "open-source". [1] [2]
> I want people to use the OSI definition in order to elevate debates.
This is... obviously biased? Other people prefer to use other definitions to elevate debates. You can't claim only the definition you like is able to elevate debates.
And the parent is putting so much effort into arguing about the definition for the same reason you did in your comment. If it was so inconsequential, nobody would care. But evidently people find it a powerful thing, hence they argue about it. You can't simultaneously do that and then claim it's irrelevant.
I think this is the most sensible and inclusive definition, otherwise you have a lot of situations where it's not technically OSI "Open Source" but the source is literally open.
I've seen people use "source available" (?) in these situations, but I don't think it really makes sense because a lot of the time the only thing holding it back from being OSI "Open Source" is that their license has not been recognized by OSI.
But now we need a new term to mean what "open-source" has meant for two decades, just because for some reason we wanted to be inclusive of licenses where the source is viewable but not open for use. And once we've redefined it, we've rendered all discussion of open-source deceptive for the period where it had its traditional meaning. I don't see any benefit to this inclusion.
> just because for some reason we wanted to be inclusive of licenses where the source is viewable but not open for use
This is not true. Recent licenses trying to protect the business built on the open source code are in general, open for use:
- Sentry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21466967
- Elastic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25833781
I see these sorts of licenses becoming increasingly common in the future, which is why I think it's silly to continue excluding them from being called open source.
The primary distinction in those licenses is that they're not generally open for use — they allow a carefully chosen, closed set of use cases. As an analogy, when a bar has a TV showing some preselected channel at a preselected volume, I don't consider that TV open to my use, even though I can use it for the use case the bar specifically chose to enable.
I do agree that licenses like this will become more common in the future, and that's why I think it's useful to have an identifying term for them rather than making "open-source" less precise to include them. Different words for different things is good, in my opinion.
> they allow a carefully chosen, closed set of use cases
I would argue that they prohibit far less use cases than they are open for.
In any case, how would you describe these licenses? I don't feel like "source available" is an accurate descriptor in this case.
I agree. My personal term for this sort of "We're OK with little people using the software but we don't want any competition" arrangement is "private-use source license," but I wouldn't be so bold as to argue that's The Best Name. My point is just that I don't think broadening "open-source" is a good answer, because all that does is make it harder to talk about the differences in licenses.
> My personal term for this sort of "We're OK with little people using the software but we don't want any competition"
Large companies are free to use Sentry. There are Fortune 50 companies running Sentry at scale internally without paying us a cent. That's totally cool.
You're also free to compete with Sentry. You're not free to repackage Sentry for the purposes of competing with us. There are lots of competing error and performance monitoring products out there that do perfectly fine without it.
I should also note that many components of Sentry are distributed with OSI-approved licenses that you are free to use to compete with us. For example, our Symbolication service (https://github.com/getsentry/symbolicator) ships with an MIT license, and it's an important part of our business.