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jrowen 5 hours ago

I didn't ask which part of the license violates OSS values, I asked what those principles and values are. I will infer that "anybody can do whatever they want with the code" is the principle you are referring to.

I kind of thought that it was more about stuff like sharing and personal development and edification and the ability to see inside and understand things. But let's get really divisive over the money stuff.

simonw 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's about unambiguously understanding exactly what my rights are and how I can use that code.

In the case of the janky new 37signals license: what exactly counts as "... where the primary value of the service is the functionality of the Software itself"?

Who gets to define the "primary value" of the thing I built?

jrowen 5 hours ago | parent [-]

So would you say that (in your opinion) a source available license could in theory call itself open source, if it used language you found to be unambiguous about your rights? Or is that not possible?

simonw 4 hours ago | parent [-]

If it calls itself "open source" and I go to https://opensource.org/licenses and can't find an approved copy of the license - or I can't ask my favourite open source expert lawyer for their advice on it - then I don't want it to call itself open source.

jrowen 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Understood, thanks.

quadrifoliate 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I apologize for having missed the mark with your question.

> I will infer that "anybody can do whatever they want with this code, OR ELSE YOU'RE NOT WORTHY" is the principle you are referring to.

I feel like there's cynicism in your phrasing, but a perhaps more neutral phrasing would be "Don't pick and choose what specific circumstances your users can use this for".

yjftsjthsd-h 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Or, as GNU puts it,

> The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms

jrowen 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There was of course and I edited it out.

Why is it important to give "everything" to the users? They have the source code. Why is it so important that they can use it for whatever they want?

danlitt 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Giving the users source code and no rights to do anything with it really doesn't give them very much. Software freedom advocates are not just nerds who really enjoy reading source code. The point is that if you have the source code and the right to change it then you take control of the activity the software is doing, or helping you to do. If you don't have control, being able to read the source code is not very useful.

scheeseman486 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Being able to fork a project when management turns hostile is one of the most effective ways GPL software protects itself from enshittification and corporate sabotage. Source available does nothing to prevent this.

quadrifoliate 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> They have the source code.

This can also be true, say, of a dump of leaked Windows source code. Would you say that that's Open Source? Why not? What's different between that and Fizzy? Fizzy's creators will also sue you in certain cases.

> Why is it so important that they can use it for whatever they want?

It's important only in terms of the ethics of calling yourself open. The OSI (and many other commenters here, and me) are saying that open source should be defined by lack of restrictions on the usage; DHH etc. are saying that it should be defined by lack of restrictions on the access.

The reasons why I think usage-based definition rather than access-based definitions are more reasonable are:

- Providing access to code is relatively cheap/easy today. This wasn't always true in the past.

- Usage has a lot more variables than access. If you start putting restrictions on it, anyone using it has to stop and think about their usage to ensure it's not falling afoul of the restrictions. For example, if I put Fizzy on my server and provide free access to it for anyone on the internet without the 1000-item limit, does that qualify as "directly compet[ing] with the original Licensor by offering it to third parties as a hosted Cloud Service"? I would hope not, but if I want to make sure I have to pay a lawyer hundreds of dollars.