Comment by JSavageOne
2 years ago
So what is the appropriate term then for "source code freely available, but cannot be used for commercial use?"
I guess probably an unpopular opinion here, but I don't see why "open source" must imply that anyone should be allowed to fork the repo and sell it.
Source available does sadly not really mean that much. Just means the source code is available. MIT licensed code and code you can see but are not allowed to use can be described as source available. That is what https://faircode.io/ got created for to solve.
Background: https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/issues/40
> I guess probably an unpopular opinion here, but I don't see why "open source" must imply that anyone should be allowed to fork the repo and sell it.
Because that is the definition of "Open Source"[0]. As was already said, "source available" is the correct term here.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition
Sorry but this is not the definition of "open source", I would argue there is only a conceptual and cultural definition of "open source". What you are linking to is The Open Source Initiative (OSI) Foundation's declaration called the "Open Source Definition".
They are a single organization, that have done a tremendous job at trying to come up with a global and shared legal framework to which people can license code under. They have gone so far to come up with a pretty good definition of "open source", but not the definition.
This would be equivalent to saying that "Freedom" is defined by the US Constitution or the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms. It is not, those are both examples of a legal definition of freedom, but neither are the sole authority for the global and cultural concept of "Freedom"
> This would be equivalent to saying that "Freedom" is defined by the US Constitution or the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms.
The idea of freedom existed before both documents. The idea of Open Source was proposed in 1998 [0], and the OSI was created to define it in the same year [1]. This is not at all equivalent.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_free_and_open-sourc...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Initiative
Source Available.
> I don't see why "open source" must imply that anyone should be allowed to fork the repo
Apart from 20+ years of historical use in that way?
You're completely misrepresenting my quote by cutting off the "and sell it" at the end, that's incredibly disingenuous.
MIT license restrict commercialization. Is the MIT license not open source then?
The MIT License does not restrict commercialization aside from requiring attribution. In fact, the text of the license includes the phrase "without restriction":
> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License
Open source software licenses have always allowed the licensed software to be resold by others. The very first criterion in the Open Source Definition is:
> 1. Free Redistribution
> The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
https://opensource.org/osd/
The "Any Source Available License 1.0" is not an open source software license because it restricts commercial use, but it happens to be correctly named because it is a source-available software license. Source-available software (such as Anytype) is still preferable to proprietary software with little to no source code published (such as Notion), since it is easier to audit software when the source code is available.
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It's not freely available, it's available for a limited set of uses. So it's not open source.