open source is distinct from Open Source
An expired visa is different than an expired Visa. Grabbing a six-inch in the Subway is different than grabbing a six-inch in the subway (gross).
The operator of BearBlog (host of this blog) recently updated the site's code from MIT to a less permissive license. The motivation was that the permissive license was spawning low effort competition to the site itself, which the operator found personally hurtful and economically threatening.
Commentary on HackerNews was pretty divided. I'd like to highlight a particular sentiment:
BearBlog post:
It hurts to believe in open-source and then be bitten by it.
HN commenter:
No, you don't believe in open source, hypocrite.
Open source means anyone can use it, even for commercial purposes, and you knew this from day zero.
The BearBlog author and the HN commenter are referring to different things with the phrase 'open source'.
BearBlog's source is here. This is link that you can open in your browser. You can open the link to the source because it is open source. Open, as in a book or computer file. Source, as in the unicode (or whatever) textfiles that get fed to a compiler or interpreter and turned into computer programs.
This is standard usage of extremely common words - let's call it the standard English definition. I expect this is the open-source that the BearBlog author believes in - legible and disclosed software for informed user consent, educational purposes, etc.
On the other hand, there is the Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition (OSD), which starts by acknowledging and disclaiming the plain English interpretation of the words as described above:
Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code.
This is the 'open source' that the angry commenter is working from.
If the angry HN commenter understood the BearBlog author to have been working from the OSD definition of "open source", then the charge of hypocrisy is defensible.
But this is a bad understanding that I would discourage.
Moreover, I'd advocate for people not to use "open source" to refer to the OSD, but to prefer "Open Source" instead.
Three requests:
Be realistic. Regardless of your own definition, regardless of the definition of any given institution, and regardless of its coinage or historical usage: the phrase 'open source', encountered in the wild, is regularly used according to the standard English definition. The words are too common and the interpretation too obvious for this to ever change.
Be charitable. If someone has an opinion on open source software that you dislike, consider first whether they are referring to open source or Open Source.
Be standards compliant. In written English, proper nouns - nouns that refer to specific or unique entities - are capitalized. A proprietary definition is a specific entity. Writing it this way strongly signals intent to readers, including those unfamiliar with the OSD. It might even prompt them to look up the implied specific usage.
The OSI itself may be making this distinction in their about page, which contains several uses of both "Open Source" and "open source", each consistent with the capitalized version referring to software that adheres to the OSD and the generic version being more generic.
nb: I made a similar comment on the HN thread but it was deleted (!?), which was a first for me. If this post gets deleted from BearBlog as well I could become radicalized and die on the stupidest hill imaginable.