Comment by koolala
3 hours ago
These terms are designed to trick people exactly like you. "Source available" means you can sue anyone that shares a modification of your code for any reason you want to make up.
3 hours ago
These terms are designed to trick people exactly like you. "Source available" means you can sue anyone that shares a modification of your code for any reason you want to make up.
I'm going to respond here assuming you are being genuine and not facetious or sarcastic (even though I am hoping you were).
"Source available" doesn't in any way mean "you can sue anyone that uses your code for any reason...". The irony of highlighting the trickery of these terms then you yourself perpetuating wrong definitions is... amusing.
"Source available" is by definition ill-defined, in the sense that "open source" is defined. There is no trademark, stewarding body, or legal entity behind "Source available". It only exists in relation to OSI defined "open source".
Which is to say, it is defined as code that does not fit the "Open Source Definition (OSD)" yet its source code is viewable. Maybe its modifiable, maybe its free to use, but maybe its neither. Thats all anyone can factually attribute to the definition of "Source available". Nothing about "suing ... for any reason".
Again, hoping you were making your comment in good fun, otherwise it doesn't look too good for you.
I edited it to be more specific while you were typing that.
The entire point of copyright is a legal mechanism to sue people. "Source-available" at a minimum is someone sharing their code under their own copyright and terms of use.
Yes the term is designed to trick outsiders. Most people don't even know that code is copyrighted by default when it is posted publicly and freely on the internet without a © symbol.
All code is shared "under someones own copyright and terms". Whether you use pre-existing words or not doesn't define if its open-source or source-available. I can write a license right now that I maintain the copyright, and written with my own terms that complies with the OSD. We happen to have a collection of existing licenses that have been vetted, but it isn't a exclusionary whitelist.
I'll reiterate, "source available" can only be defined as not OSD code that is viewable. Everything else is entirely open to implementation and interpretation.
This is the largest problem with the term. This is in stark contract to examples like "Fair Source" which has a legal definition like the OSD, and a entity behind it stewarding that definition [0], while being a subset of Source Available. All fair source is source available, not all source available is fair source.
Yet, fair source doesn't fall into your definition of source available.
[0] - https://fair.io/
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