@eloy I do not have an opinion on that specific article, but I disagree that there is no need for a distinction; there is a very problematic pattern of companies trying to bank off the positive associations and expectations that people have from "open-source", and then restricting the licensing such that none of those associations and expectations are actually there.

It is a conduit of cooptation and community labour exploitation, and should absolutely be called out as such - and if "it's not open-source" is the most succinct and effective way to communicate that to folks, given a general societal lack of labour dynamics awareness, then it'll have to do.

@joepie91 There is also the Hippocratic License 3.0, which is non-open source/non-free according to the OSI and FSF, but is not really about corporation trying to misuse it, it makes that even harder. I personally do not like those kind of licenses (because it also makes stuff harder for independent devs), but does it matter that those are not open source according to these orgs? I don't think so.

@eloy This feels more like an argument to adjust the "open-source" definition, than an argument that the categorization entirely doesn't matter, to be honest.

(I think there are also legitimate reasons *not* to adjust the definition to account for this, but that goes into a much more complex conversation about 'the public commons' and capitalism than would fit in a toot)

@joepie91 I still think that it is correct to refer to source available licenses as open source, and I also think that is the case for a license like the Hippocratic License 3.0, but it is impossible to combine these in a single definition, so then the only options left are getting rid of the definition or to have multiple mutually exclusive definitions of the term.

@eloy I don't see why it *would* be correct to refer to source-available as "open-source", when those licenses do not actually (necessarily) provide the benefits that people expect from "open-source".

Like, regardless of whether you look at it prescriptively or descriptively, I don't see it holding up in either case.

@joepie91 I think it's the case descriptively, because these companies are including source available licenses into the definition of open source, which OSI is complaining about. I agree it doesn't provide all the benefits of OSD licenses.

@eloy How does that make it valid descriptively? Even descriptive language involves more than just "someone said that X means Y" - if that were the case, then words would become meaningless because you can use any word to use anything.

Even in descriptive language, it is still very important whether the meaning is culturally understood when you use a given term, and that's the test that this fails - the meaning that people generally draw from "open-source" (the benefits gained from it) is not one that applies to the thing being described, therefore it is descriptively false.

@joepie91 it's not 'someone', it's a group big enough that OSI publicly commented on it. And then it becomes a discussion about the size of this group to impact the cultural understanding, but I can agree this is then not the case.

@eloy This is not about the size of the group - it is about power dynamics. Language is not neutral.