Poll: How do you use/understand the term “open source”?

4 points by patmcc ↗ HN
This gets argued on here not uncommonly, and I'm curious what the community thinks. I tried to capture the main differences I hear talked about.

5 comments

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> Open/free for non-commercial use is enough

Do you mean that the source is available in this case, or that it's free of cost and thus "open for non-commercial use"? Can't really tell if the slash is meant to infer equality

Hm, I suppose I meant "source open, available for non-commercial use"
Definitions have meanings.

The Open Source Definition defines "open source":

https://opensource.org/osd

"Free software" also has an official definition:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html

If the definition criteria are not met then the label cannot be used honestly.

Neither "source available" nor "open / free for non-commercial use" meet the criteria for "open source" or "free software", so those labels cannot be used honestly.

It's your software. License it as you want, but don't mislabel your license choice to try to deceive users to use your software. It is dishonest and disrespects your potential users.

Put me down for "I use the OSI definition".