Comments on: What is open source anyway?

By: OSS Watch team blog » Blog Archive » Response to “What is open source anyway?”

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:18:52 +0000

[...] What is open source anyway? [...]

By: Darin

Darin — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 23:06:12 +0000

Stuart,

Your WIX argument is not only weak and incomplete but comes across as just an attack on a company (MS).

Also for the record (and its been this way for a long time), MS has the lions share of desktop OS. If that means it only works on a handful of hardware platform then that’s irrelevant to the discussion as it still reachs the masses. I doubt you would use the same arguement if Linux had a dominating market share on the desktop.

By: Rob Mensching

Rob Mensching — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 12:12:07 +0000

Manual trackback with rebuttal: http://robmensching.com/blog/archive/2007/03/02/The-WiX-toolset-isnt-Open-Source–Someone-better-call.aspx

By: Brian Kelly

Brian Kelly — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 21:22:26 +0000

Hi Stuart – I would agree with Randy: we should be disinterested in the purposes for which the software is used for. If an open source software application is used for creating viruses, it’s still open source. Otherwise you bring subjective value judgments into the equation: an open source toolkit for generating prime numbers to be used in an application to find the answer to cancer would be fine; but the same software used to help create a nuclear weapon would not be (unless you felt that nuclear weapons were needed to safeguard civilisation – and then we get in value judgments.
A similar argument applies to the operating system environment: an open source application for a mobile phone is open source no matter what the operating system is (and lets decouple the argument from the Microsoft issue).
And as Tony says, what’s wrong with working for a company and working on open source software?
Let’s be inclusive and not build ideologically pure niches!

By: OSS Watch team blog » Blog Archive » Is it Only About The Source Code?

OSS Watch team blog » Blog Archive » Is it Only About The Source Code? — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 16:44:50 +0000

[...] What is open source anyway? [...]

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 13:22:09 +0000

it is not built by a community, but by employees of Microsoft Corporation on company time

I think that is a little unfair: why can’t people in a high-tech company be considered a community; and people in other companies work on open source in company time.

I’d tend to agree with Randy that OS basically means OSI licence: and that open development is a more useful focus. Openness might be a bit too woolly a term.

By: Randy Metcalfe

Randy Metcalfe — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:28:39 +0000

Yes. If it has an OSI-certified licence, it counts as open source software. Criterion 6 of the Open Source Definition (OSD) states

No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavour. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

That covers your ProGuard example. The OSD does not preclude less than open activity. It also does not require open development methodologies. So your WIX example does not count as a counter-example either. Rather what we see here is both the strength and the limitations of open source as the defining trait of what one might want to see in the world.

Various individuals and groups, of course, have realized this previously. That’s one reason why open development has become a focal point of useful discussion. Another key term is openness, which aims to raise the issues of openness beyond software development itself into the wider realm of open governance, open content, and open business models.