Nevertheless giving people a building block that they can do what they want with certainly seems like free as in freedom to me. So I personally sympathize with the OSI approach but in general I'm not a big on the zealotry around the open source community.
It's almost like we have a third category here: free as in freedom but you can't necessarily rebuild it yourself.
In practice I would argue that intellectual talent has always been a hidden part of this anyway and therefore we're being intellectually dishonest to imply that this hasn't always been a de facto reality even for traditional software.
> An Open Source AI is an AI system made available under terms and in a way that grant the freedoms to:
> Use the system for any purpose and without having to ask for permission.
> Study how the system works and inspect its components.
> Modify the system for any purpose, including to change its output.
> Share the system for others to use with or without modifications, for any purpose.
Previously, if your project used one of the main OS licences you were good as far as they were concerned. They mainly existed to avoid lawyers coming up with licenses that water down the rights an open source license provides.
own the trademark of “Open Source”.
They tried, and the USPTO denied their application for same. As such they have any such right to exercise.
They own a trademark for “Open Source Initiative”, and attempt to persuade the public that they alone define the term “Open Source”.
> the use of the term “Open Source” is used solely in reference to software distributed under OSI Approved Licenses. [1]
So you can refer to any software as "Open Source," regardless of their definition. But, if you call a piece of software "Open Source" alongside the use of the Open Source Initiative's trademark, then you must also use their definition of "Open Source," unless you otherwise have written permission.
So every time I talk about open source I'm a dirty trademark infringer and IP pirate?
In more concrete terms: they're the stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD), which is a rather explicit, but still subject to interpretation, list of criteria to decide if a particular software license is, or is not, "really Open Source". This is very important in the context of "Open Source washing" that is still a thing, and was even more important a decade or two ago, when there was a Cambrian explosion of licenses which claimed to be Open Source.
The OSI is specifically built with a different vision from the FSF.
Free software, shall always be free, with almsource and ideally all derived works.
Open Source wants the code to be spread and for that allows inclusion with commercial software. (i.e. Microsoft was able to take open source TCP/IP stacks from BSD (BSD License) and integrate with Windows 95. That wouldn't have worked with a GPL Free Software implementation. (Even LGPL)
The supporting argument there is: By allowing that Microsoft's implementation was fully compatible to the rest of the world instead of having "bugs" (purposely?) in their own implementation, which would limit interoperability.
The free software argument is that they now took the code and closed it, not giving users a freedom to review (verify) and fix themselves. Which allowed Windows to play in TCP world instead of being an outsider.
If they do anything more than that, then I've not seen it.
> The conferees decided it was time to dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had been associated with "free software" in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape. They brainstormed about tactics and a new label. "Open source", contributed by Chris Peterson, was the best thing they came up with.
Given that the OSI exists to water down a distinctly moral framework like Free Software into a version that is less "moralizing" and "confrontational" so as to be more appealing to corporations, the path that Open Source has taken over the last few years is hardly surprising.
I've become convinced that the cure for what has been ailing us in the FOSS movement is going to come only as we buck the corporate elements and return to something more closely resembling the original Free Software ethics-based movement. The GPL and AGPL are some of the only licenses not to get totally sucked up in corporate interests, and that's not a coincidence: they were founded on the deeply and sincerely held principle that it is an ethical imperative to advance the good of software's individual human users.
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20071115150105/https://opensource...
Neither of these licenses address the gigantic "internal use" loophole
FSF is also just as dogmatic as OSI in it's refusal to distinguish corporations from individuals
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#InternalDistributi... https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePo...
So probably a court or a different upstream could interpret distribution as including distribution between employees.
All that said, I'm not sure what your calling this out was meant to imply in the context of the person you quoted?
The same goes for the internal use loophole: the corporation should be required to provide its internal users with certain freedoms, and if they do that then mission accomplished.
Nevertheless, their Open Source Definition is reasonably respected
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
Edit: I'll simplify the above to "the statement in the parent comment is demonstrably not true"
You're thinking of copyleft licenses, not Free Software.
FSF puts it this way:
> Another group uses the term “open source” to mean something close (but not identical) to “free software.” We prefer the term “free software” because, once you have heard that it refers to freedom rather than price, it calls to mind freedom. The word “open” never refers to freedom.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
The OSI has its definition here: https://opensource.org/osd
And yes, the term "open source" predates OSI, but till OSI didn't have any specific definition and was slightly different for everybody. OSI created a mostly accepted definition whoch is distinct from FSF's Free Software definition.
The movements have differing philosophical and political stances, but Free Software is automatically also Open Source Software, and vice versa.
The fact that they have fooled so many people into thinking they own a trademark on a generic phrase is, however, pretty impressive.