Comment by sofixa
3 hours ago
> Personally I think differentiation between "open source" and "source available" is good
Maybe, but I think that "source available" isn't detailed enough and can mean many many different things.
> Source available means I can basically help debug issues I have...but I expect that a paid licence is required and will have a selection of limitations (number of nodes, etc).
Point in case. For me there is one group, under something like BSL or FSL or SSPL which mostly restricts you from competing with the project's creators (e.g. making your own SaaS out of it), but everything else is fair use, you can use it in prod to make money at any size, etc. And a separate, more restrictive one, which has size, or production restrictions (you can't run the software if you're a commercial entity).
Source available sounds like a good description for the second one, because it's just available, little more. But for the first one where you can do whatever you want with one single exception that doesn't impact 99.9999% of potential users, it's not a good and clear enough description.
I agree with you the "source available" is overstretched. It's hard to come up with a good new label for the first group. Maybe "Open Use" or "Fair Source".
People run with OSI initiative as it is and consider it the golden rule when I agree with your 99.9999% of potential users line.
I think that *one blunder?) is that OSI cant really consider SSPL or similar open source because it restricts access to one party so it breaches an freedom 0 or some freedom of open source which is fair but at the same time literally only impacting people competing against (in my opinion the funding of the project and its growth itself) if someone like amazon had created a redis service competing against redis itself lets say
I think its all kinda nuanced and we kinda need more discussion with source available.