On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 12:32 PM Kevin P. Fleming <[email protected]> wrote:
> 1) "Open Source" has significant brand value. > > 2) "Source Available" is very commonly the model chosen by proprietary > software companies who want to make the source code available but > don't allow distribution, don't accept contributions, etc. That's > pretty far from the 'open source development' methodology. > The ways in which the "ethical source" movement is different than "open source" is exactly the distinction with "source available". Language matters, and what the key personalities from "ethical source" have stated they want (author centric licensing) is most often called proprietary software. If they wanted to call themselves "Non-profit Proprietary Software" there would have been no objections, as that is a fairly accurate description of what they wish to accomplish. Calling what they are doing "Ethical Open Source" will cause conflicts as there are many people who disagree that what they are doing is ethical sourcing (ethical consumerism) or at all similar to open source (any more than Microsoft's shared source program was). The availability of source code is not the defining feature of open source. I happen to believe that the 'open source development' methodology (AKA: Commons-based peer production -- see Yochai Benkler's book) is disabled by discrimination and non-deterministic political interpretations being added to licensing. It isn't as bad a problem for projects to have this discrimination, and forking without permission is possible and sharing between politically different commons are possible. But once a license has this discrimination, it is no longer 'open source development' methodology. There is such a large focus on whether the OSD can be changed -- I believe it can, and when necessary should. I think it is obvious that I don't believe this is one of those times, except if we decide to possibly add clarity to the OSD as to why the discrimination some desire must be excluded from open source. This is a case where a group of people who have discovered a political problem haven't yet thought through the consequences of their proposed solution. In this case I believe the solution (authors exerting control over users through non-deterministic discrimination) is outside of what can be called open source whether or not any specific license conflicted with the OSD. -- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable media player from my cold dead hands!" http://c11.ca/own
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