Comment by eudoxus
2 years ago
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