Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary [LWN.net]

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Jan 28, 2021 6:38 UTC (Thu) by kirschner (subscriber, #62102)
Parent article: Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Thanks Jake for the article.

One addition about a detail of the article: you write that open source (or Free Software) is not a business model, but if we want to sharpen our thinking we should also consider questioning seeing it as development model.

In my talk at FOSDEM 2020 "core values of software freedom" I also quickly talk about why Free Software / open source is not a development model (see around minute 06:00).

At the FSFE we made the experience that differing between open development models and Free Software helps people taking better strategic decisions for their businesses and organisations.

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Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Jan 28, 2021 9:26 UTC (Thu) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (3 responses)

OSI certainly describes "open source" as a development methodology. See their mission statement.

The FSF(E) is obviously entitled to decide what "Free Software" means (it's their movement!), but purporting to speak on behalf of the open source side of things is IMHO questionable.

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Jan 28, 2021 9:56 UTC (Thu) by kirschner (subscriber, #62102) [Link] (2 responses)

Where in the OSI's mission statement do you read that? The part: "Open source enables a development method..." just underlines the point that Free Software enables certain open development models.

Beside that, the FSFE's considers "Free Software" and "Open Source Software" as different terms for the same software. See https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/freesoftware.html#synonyms for a short version and https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/comparison.html for the longer.

Both terms are used by people who talk about software freedom, while -- as we see in the article -- the terms are also used by some people to promote their proprietary software, and just want to make people believe it is Free Software / Open Source Software to benefit from its good reputation. Something many argued we as software freedom community should not accept.

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Jan 28, 2021 19:21 UTC (Thu) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (1 responses)

There are at least four possible things you could mean by "open source":

1. The open source software itself.
2. Open source licenses (which I *think* is what OSI means by "open source enables...").
3. The open source development methodology (the "development method" that OSI is referring to).
4. The people who practice it (the "open source movement").

"Free software" can refer to any of the above, or:

5. The free software ideology (four freedoms etc.). Open source has no directly comparable ideology.

Please, can you clarify which of those five things you are referring to? Or if you are referring to a sixth thing, can you define it?

Elastic promises "open"—delivers proprietary

Posted Jan 29, 2021 6:04 UTC (Fri) by kirschner (subscriber, #62102) [Link]

Sorry, I thought that is quite clear in the talk and the links I provided, but to make it explicit:

When I write about "Free Software" or "Open Source Software" I mean the same software.
When I write "Free Software movement" or "Open Source (Software) movement" I mean the same movement for software freedom, or I talk about "Free Software contributors".
When I write about "Free Software license" or "Open Source license" I mean the same licenses defined by the FSF and the OSI.

Please let me know if you have suggestions where to improve the FSFE's Free Software page or our article about the different terms in this area.

I would not write about "open source development methodology", at least not in the sense that this is then resulting in "open source software" as we are convinced it prevents better understanding. One example: A hundred universities can develop software together in the public with hundreds of students and professors participating in the development. If the software license says that you can just use this software for academic purposes, it does not fulfill the FSF and OSI requirements.

Therefor I call development models with many stakeholders and public development an "open development model". Calling it an "open source development model" in our experience misleads people to believe the resulting software meets the FSF and OSI requirements.

Although depending on the discussion it might even be better to specify if the code development is done by e.g. just one person or company in the public, or by many different stakeholders but without public repositories, or by many stakeholders in public repositories, and clarify if and how others are allowed to commit to those repositories.

You can develop software which meets the FSF and OSI requirements, but which followed a very closed development model = small amount of contributors or non-public repositories.

And the development model / practice for a certain software can change over time in both directions.