Comment by em-bee
4 hours ago
Open-source licensed with non-free license is still open-source, although non-FOSS
nope. there are only a few licenses approved by OSI that are not also considered Free Software. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html look at the long list of GPL incompatible Free Software licenses.
btw "open source that is non-FOSS" makes no sense because FOSS literally means Free and Open Source Software"
>there are only a few licenses approved by OSI that are not also considered Free Software
This is what I'm trying to conterpoint: you're thinking of "Free software" as in legal definition of GNU (4 freedoms), and "Open Source software" as in legal definition of OSI (10 points), in terms of the licenses approved by these organizations.
Users see open-source as a combination of legal/social/community expectations, as a phenomenon. Overwhelming majority of the software have only legal license, and nothing more, and oftentimes the developer themselves don't know what their social behavior should be, they're forming it given the circumstances.
We focused ONLY on the legal definition of open source for very long, and hardly spent time on the other, IMO much more important things: for whom this software is for, how should you communicate, what should you expect as a user, everything about social aspect, maintenance (which is out of scope of legal definitions of the software, but which made FOSS that appealing).
I've even seen cases where the author changed the license (used "legal measures") to prevent further community from forming around the software (to decimate users, to make the software less appealing to FOSS community), because it was too overwhelming to respond to everyone. Instead of using direct measures (social statements of some kind), they used license as a community control method. The author didn't really want to change the code license, they just didn't know other means to achieve different social expectations/behavior they want.