It seems like the author is confusing open source with Open Source. The latter has a formal definition which includes a lot more than simple access to source code.
I also agree that no one is entittled to free support or enhancements, bugfizes, etc.
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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It seems like the author is confusing open source with Open Source
No, they made it pretty clear that they do understand it. Here's a relevant quote:
When software is open-source, it is open-source, not necessarily free and open-source (FOSS), and even if it is FOSS, it might still have a restrictive licence[sic]. The code being available in and of itself does not give you a right to take it, modify it, or redistribute it.
- open source - the definition you linked
- FOSS - includes free software - wording is wonky here, but I'm pretty sure OP means Free Software here given the italics and whatnot
- code being available - source available != open source; e.g. Unreal Engine is source available, provided you agree to their terms, but distribution is very limited
They didn't go into depth, which is fine (would've made the post much longer), but I think they did a fair job. A lot of people assume that if they have access to the source, they can do whatever they want with it, which absolutely isn't the case. Read the terms of the license, or at least be familiar w/ the major licenses and how to recognize them.
Free and open source software. "Open Source" has always been an attempt to attract big fish, hoping they are not evil, just slow. It's morally obsolete, while FOSS still isn't.
And BSD\ISC\MIT understanding of FOSS is even less morally obsolete every day that comes, no expectations that a properly designed virus license will somehow convert the humanity, just letting out seeds of knowledge that will eventually change the world or maybe not. It's sacrificial, but also very potent.
Anyway, most of those expecting free support are companies making money on products they haven't spend a dime improving. Or employees of such companies.
The whole world is using Java, but where is Sun? The whole world is using Asterisk (ok, maybe not all of it), but its developers are not millionaires AFAIK.
Entitled script kiddies are just dumb and rude, but I think there's much less of them than the former group. And they are less persistent, than that former group.
I agree with parts about entitlement. The expectation of support and treatment of open source software as if it was proprietary is a real problem.
But, the authour makes a similar mistake - they conflate open source software with source-available (proprietary) software. As an example, I strongly disagree with this part:
When software is open-source, it is open-source, not necessarily free and open-source (FOSS), and even if it is FOSS, it might still have a restrictive licence. The code being available in and of itself does not give you a right to take it, modify it, or redistribute it.
If you replace it with this version, I am happy:
When software is source-available, it is source-available, not necessarily open source or free and open-source (FOSS). The code being distributed under a source available license does not give you a right to take it, modify it, or redistribute it.
I think it's really important that we keep a clear delineation between free/open source software on one side, and source-available (proprietary software) on the other.
A lot of companies are trying to co-opt and blur the meaning of the term so they can say "seeing the source was always the point, none of the other freedoms mattered", in order to sell you proprietary licenses.
Open source gives you the right to take, modify and redistribute it. Source available does not. And that's ok, just please don't blur the terms together.
even if it is FOSS, it might still have a restrictive license
Likewise, this is definitionally untrue. The whole purpose of FOSS is to give you the four freedoms.
I once had an argument in another community on here about something very similar. And they told me I was wrong. The mods deleted my posts.
I posted the links and the definition/requirements for FOSS as compared to just open source.
They kept telling me i was talking about open source and not libre.
The links and definitions and requirements I posted:
From Richard Stallman, from the site whose creators developed the rules and requirements for FOSS, GNU.org, and from the itsFOSS site which, indeed, references and links to the first 2.
The definitions also explicitly state the difference and uniqueness of each and compares them to the nonstandard open source (source available) labels.
I unjoined that community and found a less ignorant one.
The mods are definitely wrong, and they shouldn't be deleting posts here. But you could also be wrong, I don't have the original posts to go off of, but I do have this one.
FOSS is not the same as Free Software, it's a combination of Free Software and Open Source software, meaning it applies to both. In long form, it's Free and Open Source Software, meaning it applies to things applying to one or the other, and not necessarily both.
If you mean Free Software (i.e. the FSF/GNU definition), then use that term. If you mean Open Source (i.e. the OSI definition), then use that term. If you're not sure which you mean, but you know you mean one of the two, use the term FOSS. If you just mean the source is available but it doesn't necessarily fit the the Free Software or Open Source definitions, use the term "source available" and leave it at that.
Most FOSS licenses are both Free and Open Source (i.e. they meet the definition of both), but not all. Many Open Source licenses are incompatible w/ Free Software licenses, for example the Apache 2.0 license is incompatible with the (L)GPL < v3 in some cases.
In general:
- FOSS - preferred when the software is either free software or open source software
- source-available - preferred when the software is not FOSS, but you do have access
- proprietary - use for either source-available or non-source-available software
- Free Software - use when referring to copy-left software (yes, it applies to more, but let's keep things simple)
Go to gnu.org
I linked GNU's definition of Free Software already.
Maybe it sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory but with how often people make this "mistake" i really believe it's a deliberate effort to undermine the meaning of open-source
I think many people fail to wrap their head around the concept since almost everywhere else nothing is really free.
Yeah, freedom has become vanishingly rare
The code being distributed under a source available license does not give you a right to take it, modify it, or redistribute it.
I would add in "automatically" there. Source-available licenses could give you the right to modify it and redistribute it, or it may not. For example, the Unreal Engine is proprietary and covered by a source-available model, and you can redistribute it to other license holders (must accept certain terms and conditions), and even then w/ restrictions. So you can take it, modify it, and redistribute it, but there are a handful of very important asterists there.
Basically, if you don't recognize the license as one of the major ones (Apache, BSD, MIT, (L|A)GPL, etc), then treat it as source-available w/ no rights other than reading it until you actually read and understand the license.
even if it is FOSS, it might still have a restrictive license
Likewise, this is definitionally untrue. The whole purpose of FOSS is to give you the four freedoms.
That depends on your definition of "restriction."
If you use a copyleft license, you could be restricted from using proprietary plugins, since you'd have to release the source of those plugins if a user accesses it in a covered way, and you don't have the right to do that. That sounds like a restriction to me, and it doesn't apply to more permissive licenses like BSD or MIT.
The intent of copyleft is to ensure freedoms for the recipients of derivatives of your works. In software that means the users of forks. Copyleft restricts you to the same license (or a compatible one) to prevent you adding more restrictions. ""More permissive"" software licenses can be redistributed with the same license but often it's a more restrictive license (e.g. MIT -> proprietary).
You can't remove the license, say MIT, or add any restrictions to the code. You can combine it with other works and distribute the combined work under different terms, provided you still abide by the terms of the license (e.g. source distributions need to retain the license, binary distributions don't).
Copyleft forces modified distributions to have the same terms as the copylefted software. If you have some MIT code and some GPL code and you combine it, the combined work is GPL. Likewise if you combine proprietary code and GPL, the combined work is GPL, and that'd regardless of how it's distributed.
Permissive licenses protect the source as it was when it was combined into the other work. Copyleft licenses enforce distributed changes to the source are made available under the same license. Which one you want depends on what "freedoms" you want. Do you want the freedom to use the source however you want, including with proprietary code? Then you want a permissive license. Do you want to ensure that any changes to the code are always available? Then you want copyleft code.
Yes, just because the source code is available doesn't mean it is licensed for others to take. Now we have AI tools that have scraped the web for all of its content and won't see the difference between source available, open source , and free and open source. It is possible that those who use AI tools could be unknowingly using code without the license to do so.
Yeah, seeking support is notoriously difficult. Everyone working in IT knows this. I feel with open-source, it's more the projects which aren't in a classic Free Software domain, who attract beggars. For example the atmosphere of a Github page of a Linux tool will have a completely different atmosphere than a fancy AI tool or addon to some consumer device or service. I see a lot of spam there and demanding tone. While with a lot of more niche projects, people are patient, ask good questions and in return the devs are nice. And people use the thumbsup emoji instead of pinging everyone with a comment...
I feel, though... I you're part of an open source project which doesn't welcome contributions and doesn't want to discuss arbitrary user needs and wants, you should make that clear. I mean Free Software is kind of the default in some domains. If you don't want that as a developer, just add a paragraph of text somewhere prominently, detailing how questions and requests are or aren't welcome. I as a user can't always tell if discussing my questions is a welcome thing and whether this software is supposed to cater for my needs. Unless the project tells me somehow. That also doesn't help with the beggars... But it will help people like me not to waste everyone's time.
Good article. As an open source maintainer, I agree. The majority of interactions I have from my users are positive, but every once in a while, some entitled asshat does make unreasonable demands. I usually respond with a stern dressing down, but respectfully. If they continue, I’ll block them from whatever channel.
One thing that annoys me is when people get upset that I use Discord for support. I get it, it has drawbacks, but I’m not going to spend my limited resources hosting an alternative that most people won’t want to use anyway. Everything I use to host, distribute, and support my projects is free for both me and my users, and that’s because I’m not getting paid to make my projects. I also give out my email, so it’s not even a fair criticism.
Discord
To be fair, Discord blows, and I highly recommend Matrix instead.
But it's your project, so it's your rules. Thank you for making your code available.
I agree that Discord blows, but it’s what my users use, and it’s free. Maybe there are free Matrix servers I could use instead of hosting it myself, but the problem is still that my users want a Discord server. Basically the same reason I use GitHub. It at least doesn’t blow, like Discord, but it’s not open. I’d prefer to use something else, but I’d get less user interaction. Hopefully once Codeberg’s federation is complete, that will change. Thank you for being kind. :)
Hopefully once Codeberg’s federation is complete, that will change.
Hopefully. I'm using self-hosted Forgejo, and it's really quite nice, but I would 100% make a public mirror (and accept PRs) on Github if I wanted collaboration. I get it, the most important thing for a FOSS maintainer is connecting w/ the community so they can both get help and provide help for their little community. Hopefully federation solves that divide, because making a bunch of dev accounts at random places sucks, especially when you just want to file an issue or add some context to a bug to help the devs fix it.
So yeah, I'm not going to judge. I will say, however, that there are tons of free Matrix servers out there if you ever want to try it out. I use Mozilla's (chat.mozilla.org, for personal stuff) and openSUSE's (chat.opensuse.org, for development stuff), but there are several others out there as well. I think you can also still bridge Discord in case your users wanted to keep using Discord and others wanted to use Matrix, and it works reasonable well. If not, that's cool too.
I would absolutely appreciate that any decisions and documentation gets put somewhere outside of Discord, because finding it is incredibly hard if you don't know to look there (and annoying even if you do). But I offer that not as a criticism (and maybe you already do it), but more as advice for how to take some work off your plate so users can solve problems themselves.
So yeah, thanks again for doing open source dev. I used to be fairly active w/ it, but then I had kids and my time seemed to just disappear. I do make random contributions here and there when I come across problems (e.g. I send some fixes to Lemmy and a few other services I use), but I'm not really at a place where I can really lead a project. But hopefully I'll be back in that position in the next couple years as my kids get more and more independent.
Well said.
Seems that 2 of those entitled ones are following you on Lemmy. 😄
The rant describes the bad kind, the look-but-don't-touch Open Source.
That's "source available," which the author specifically also mentions.
The point is about entitlement to having your changes accepted by upstream, as well as entitlement to support from the devs. Neither exists, open source merely protects your rights to modify and distribute changes yourself, it says nothing about obligations about the person providing the code in the first place.
Open source is just that
"Open" is an unspecific, a range of openness from not redistributable to (libre) free software.
- Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
- Source Code
The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
- Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
That is what I would mean by "open source" but I can't blame the uninitiated from thinking it means something else. Consider every-day usage of the word "open" - an open door could be fully open, just have a small gap or even shut but unlocked ("come in, the door is open"). A well-meaning developer could think Unreal engine is open source because they can see the source code (the code is "open" to them). Words don't have innate definitions, they have usages.
Sure, but there are definitions available. If you're unfamiliar with a term, it's not unreasonable to search "open source definition."
"Free Software" has a similar problem in that people assume it just means freeware, when in fact it has a very specific meaning.
Anyway, this is another good reason to use the term FOSS. Most people don't care about the difference between free and open source software, and the term is unfamiliar enough that they'll look up the definition.