Talk:Open source

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[edit] The Criticism Section

The "criticism" section seems confused - it is introducing concepts about money-making - into a subject that has nothing to do with making money. The whole point about Open Source software is that a group of people decide to release their code to the world free from copyright restrictions, lawyers, and moneylenders. That is one of the main things that attracted me, as an end user and educationalist, to Linux builds, and then Mambo and Joomla! as an alternative to paying large amounts of money to Bill Gates for stuff that the Open Source Community (note - community) has been able to do better or just as well. Open Source creators are probably more motivated by the excitement of doing something useful for the rest of us for free and in trying to achieve the very best results. It's called "voluntary work"! How can anyone be criticised for doing good works? To criticise an enterprise because it is not motivated by greed or the profit motive is just bizarre. The only people really scared of Open Source software are the big companies afraid of losing their billions. A "criticism" in this context is really about how good the final product is, how well it compares with well known commercial products. The fact that it is not a capitalist enterprise is irrelevant or could be mentioned in a "social significance" subsection. or in a social behavioural sub-section questioning why it is that companies insist on spending fortunes upgrading Windows software when they could either not upgrade or switch to the new nice and easy Linuxes or just pay someone to find ways of making Windows do something useful! Seriously, this is an encyclopedia so the entry should be mostly about fact - what it is, what it does, how it works etc etc. with social impacts in a lesser section. 79.66.184.222 15:09, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

First, if you think Open Source is "free from copyright restrictions, [and] lawyers", you haven't been paying attention. In fact, it's entirely based on copyright restrictions and lawyers, ironically much moreso than on software. Only the Public domain is free of them, and PD is neither Open Source nor Free Software by anybody's definitions.
Second, nobody is criticising voluntary work. But if you re-read the section you're complaining about, you'll see that it says "The critics argue that without this compensation, many socially desirable and useful works would never be created in the first place." That criticism is perfectly valid, even if it isn't universally or undeniably true. Taking another type of "socially desirable and useful works" as an example, most enduring examples of well-regarded art have been paid for by some party or other, allowing the artist the time and energy to focus on their art. Actually, the same is true of much well-loved Open Source too. Brian Behlendorf, Alan Cox, Guido van Rossum, and Linus Torvalds all get paid by sponsors to do their good works.
Lastly, I'm not a big corporation, but I've spent 30 years of my life as a software craftsman, and I'm afraid of anyone who thinks I shouldn't be able to earn a living doing code. It doesn't mean I don't do pro bono work, in fact I and my brothers-in-code do lots of it. But we like to feed, house, and clothe our families too. RossPatterson 03:27, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Not objective enough. It is misleading to say that Open Source is even more based on lawyers etc. in the sense that we end users will understand, in its commonly understood sense. If I copy my version of Joomla! for a friend and he copies it for another friend that is allowable. I'm not going to get fined by the Open Source developers who in fact want as many people as possible to use their product. The game for them is to produce a better and more popular product. I don't pay a fee. There is no financial transaction. The contract is that I will not claim to be the producer, that I will acknowledge and hopefully promote the software and its creators. A totally different contract to a commercial one. Each OS product of course does have a legal status as explained on the OSI [1] site but on a perfectly reasonable common sense basis of not pretending that a product is yours when it is not. You might say why bother producing such legal documentation but I would guess it was because of unscrupulous individuals trying to pass off other people's work as their own - hence the need to create a legal framework to protect the idea of Open Source which seems contradictory but in an unscrupulous world understandable. However, for the rest of us, we just understand that we can use the software, add to it and develop it and not have think about policemen.
Open Source also gives a lot of very talented but unknown people the opportunity to show off their talents. It also aloows the saem people to try something different and in the end the whole Open Source initiative is a fantastic playground for creators and users alike. Since I discovered "Freeware" (different I know) and Open Source I have been able to set up an excellent Content Management system of my own using Joomla. I would never have been able to do that without the community that created it. Thousands of people are involved and hundreds are producing superb addons and extensions all the time. That is really the essence and spirit of Open Source.
The downside are lack of support sometimes, no actual individual to contact when you need help, a high degree of computer knowledge, no guarantees etc etc. And so, it is also perfectly reasonable I think for the OS community to offer paid services for support and training - the money-making future and just financial reward I think. Incidentally, no artist paints just to make money although obviously we all need to make it! That's my contribution to this debate. I'm retiring now!

Keveen2 12:05, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opensource.org

This article only has (that I could readily see) an obscure link to Opensource.org (history footnote #3 osihistory). Doesn't it deserve a more prominent link? Is there a better concise URL aout open source software (that could be put on a bumper sticker for example)? Curiously the wiki [Open_Source_Initiative] article does not have a prominent link to Opensource.org - the first 'external link tho only labeled "Official Website" Shouldn't it say Opensource.org as well?

- I think the opening line of the Open_Source_Initiative page should be:

The Open Source Initiative ( [| www.opensource.org ] ) is an organization dedicated to promoting open-source software.

And the line in the history section of this page should read:

This milestone may be commonly seen as the birth of the Open Source Initiative ( [| www.opensource.org ] ).[citation needed]

I'm not a very active OS participant. I suppose turf considerations ("free" vs" "open") account for not have ONE prominent URL. Despite it's shortcomings we should be promoting the term "Open Source" rather than inventing new terms. I think "free" as in "freedom" is an idea too difficult to "sell". BTW, all the related articles on this on wikipedia would make it useful to have more links to: | Various Open source / free software related Wikipedia articles Fholson 12:59, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Open source: follow

Just a thing: as open source is not only regarding informatics and software or other in relation to it, please take in consideration there are other kind of open source projects that need attention. The only talking about the Joe's cell is an open source way and as many know, the Joe's cell is an open source tool, 'cause everyone can made one and use it, but laws don't permit it, so ... the question still. What do they want really? Health or money? But they are out from open source!

So I think it should also necessary to have an index where to find the exact section. If I find something useful and I give it to the collectivity, this is open source, 'cause I don't ask any money or other in return (this means totally free). This must be free for all and no Government can do something, no law. When the source of the base project is open to everyone, it means that everyone can use it. No rights are required. Only, give those modifications you could apply, those updatings, to the entire collectivity to try and find other. This is what a serious collectivity should do.

So a page dedicated to open source, I think should include that index with alla values regarding to it.

But it's up to you. This is only a proposal.

In respect to the asked neutral point of view —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.223.121.133 (talk) (09:02, 11 October 2007

I wasn't familiar with "Joe cells" so for the benefit of other readers who would not immediately understand the reference, this is apparently a debated technology. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Joe_Cell -- and for an alternate point of view, the top Google hit for this term is http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/05/the_joe_cell_a.php right now.-- era (Talk | History) 21:26, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Afd: Free and open source software

FYI: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Free_and_open_source_software --Gronky 13:27, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Result of AfD was Keep

discuss a merger at Talk:Free_and_open_source_software#Merge_FS_.2B_OSS_here Lentower 01:12, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] OS and OSS merge still being considered?

FWIW, I still think the idea of merging the open source and open-source software articles is a really good idea. --Gronky 16:18, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

This merge is a good idea. Lentower 03:34, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I vote no on the merge. You'll have to consider the history of why the articles were taken apart. Simply, this "open source" article has become polluted with "open-source software" details, and that is not a reason to re-merge them. As the old argument states, a rectangle is not a square as well as, in an analogy, open-source software is not open source. The more recent revolution of open-source in open-source software is not does not denote the invention of open source itself. — Dzonatas 12:40, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
It sounds like you are saying that "open source" existed before the 1998 launch of "open-source software". This is misappropriation of history. --Gronky 14:06, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Not at all, see this link where the term is recognized to exist before 1998: here -- — Dzonatas 19:25, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Secret sauce

I'm not a native English speaker and only recently learned of the term "secret sauce". To what extent was the term "open source" invented as a pun on "secret sauce"? Currently, a Google search for the two terms returns no less than 84,000 web pages. But what early evidence of this connection exists? --LA2 (talk) 04:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thinning of "See also" links

I removed a good number of links to specific projects, sites, and topics which I did not feel suitable for the broad and general nature of this article. Some of them should probably be included on the open source software page or similar. Here's the diff.-- era (Talk | History) 21:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "A Free Open-Source Software Resource" Relevance == Informative

"A Free Open-Source Software Resource", http://www.zentu.net is a site I pay money for, out of my own pocket, to inform people about the benefits of Free Open-Source Software. I have never been paid a penny for any of its content, nor accepted any donations. It is not link-spam; it's useful, relevant, comprehensive and informative. Please accept it in lieu of my financial ability to donate actual cash. Thank you.

Indiejade (talk) 23:12, 15 December 2007 (UTC) Shawnee :)

Your website does not belong as an external link in Wikipedia articles. It adds nothing encyclopedic to them, it has very little content, and nothing significantly original. Please do not add it to any more articles. RossPatterson (talk) 18:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

The link is useful in that it 'organizes' the vague cloud of 'free open-source software' into categories that are informative and understandable to the average non-technical user. Free open-source software itself is nothing to people unless they understand what it does or can do for them. Free word-processors? A free spreadsheet program? Free graphic-design software? All of these are common examples of Free Open-Source Software that a lot of people would and could benefit from using, but that many don't understand how to get, though they may have heard about F/OSS. The link bridges the gap. The details are explained on the site. The website does collectively what each individual small open-source project cannot do on its own, and that is bring awareness to the concept of Free Open-Source Software as it relates to software for which people would normally pay money. I would be very interested in seeing how many of these removals of my link and revised edits are being done by people on Microsoft Operating Systems. . .

The average non-technical user is not interested in the politics, which is why this argument is extremely futile and hurting the cause. RossPatterson, your opinion that the site is "not a particularly good one at that" is irrelevant, not to mention rude, and unless you can point the way to a website that does what mine does better, I kindly ask that you please do not remove my contribution.

Extremely long alphabetical lists are okay for some things, but sometimes people like and can understand things better when they're organized more simply, explained according to function ala - KISS_Principle. Again, a non-technical user wouldn't necessarily be able to easily make sense of or navigate that extremely long alphabetical list. Nor does the List of open source software packages on wikipedia make efficient use of the correlation of FOSS with operating systems like Linux or Unix. http://www.zentu.net/ does both. The point is for people who know little to nothing about FOSS to be gradually introduced to the idea, without becoming overwhelmed. Again, I assert that my link does NOT harm the "encyclopedic" integrity of any wikipedia page related to this topic. Again, I would be very interested to know exactly what operating system the people who are removing my link are running on their machines. Please DO NOT remove my contribution, which is the link. Indiejade (talk) 16:40, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but the onus is on you to demonstrate the significance and notability of this website if you want the link to stay. Go read the Wikipedia policy for the details of why and how. RossPatterson (talk) 02:31, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The significance and notability of the site has already been demonstrated as explained above. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Indiejade (talk • contribs) 22:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The site is whilst not commercial is very definitely promotional in nature and subsequently goes against policy as per WP:COI (self promotion). I agree with RossPatterson in this regard. User A1 (talk) 04:18, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
I concur with Ross and User A1. This link should be deleted. It violates WP policies. Indiejade's arguments are good ones for it being included on non-WP sites. Lentower (talk) 12:15, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Includes free software, intersects with open content, used by consortia --section removed

I'm removing this to talk for the time being. In its current form it's simply a statement of personal opinion by whoever wrote it, and is completely unsourced:


Perens and Raymond themselves are far clearer and more exact and honest about what constitutes open source licensing, and what does not. Under their definitions, free software is clearly a type of open source, and most consortium efforts like Java and W3 make use of open source licenses. The open content movement intersects with the open source movement but supports licenses such as CC-by-nc-sa that clearly and explicitly and deliberately violate Perens' and Raymond's principles.
Persons unfamiliar with the detailed legal distinctions between the various movements above are usually best advised to use more specific terms describing the actual characteristics of the movement. Better terms, such as mass peer review or social software or open politics or consensus decision making, exist to describe specific types of use or theories. The term open source culture can be used to describe the most general aspects of the model, but “open source” is (according to the principles) a way to describe source code that the public can read, and nothing else. Mass peer review is accordingly implied, but none of the social, political, legal or other attributes are implied—for instance transparency of business deals is not included.

--Tony Sidaway 20:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] does OS have to be software?

the beggining says "Open source is a set of principles and practices on how to write software." However, there are several projects that have hardly anything ( or even COMPLETELY anything ) in common with programming or software in general, such as OpenCola, Vores Øl , [2] .... those are only few examples that i found during last 30 minutes and i'm pretty sure there are much more such projects. I think it would be a good idea to mention this in the article, because it fits the definition of open source ( despite the fact, that it is not software ). 79.185.99.223 (talk) 16:47, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

--Sean.mcclowry (talk) 07:06, 21 May 2008 (UTC) I agree that open source does not need to apply stictly to code although it is what most people think when they think of open source. Another example would be www.openmethodology.org. Maybe a good approach would be to state that most people think code when they think open source but there are arguably some other implementations that follow the same principles.
Be careful about revisionism. There's free software, and there are things which free software got ideas from, and there are things that have been inspired by free software. I think it's wrong to look at pre-1983 events and call them free software inspired.
For example, the pre-1983 code sharing community in MIT was something that inspired the free software. Openmethodology is something new that's been inspired by free software. (And all that is equally true if you replace "free" with the marketing term "open source") --Gronky (talk) 08:59, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Open Source vs. Creative Commons

Open source as a movement is agnostic about sharing as it does not compel any sharing or put conditions on sharing of improvements, nor prevent actions that prevent future sharing.

I think that this statement isn't true. Altough it matters whether we are speaking about client or server side software. In client side open source software you have to share improvements. --Zslevi (talk) 19:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The distinction here is "open source" as opposed to "free software". Open source is a superset of free software. It includes such things as BSD-licensed code, which is not copyleft. Chris Cunningham (talk) 19:39, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

King Kamal —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.81.81.184 (talk) 03:22, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History of the term

The reference to the usenet posting on "Looking for published DES code" is a poor example of previous use because it appears to confuse the sense in which the term is used there. This posting uses 'open source' in its original sense of publicly available intelligence-relevant information as referred to in the article Open Source Intelligence. Might it not be better to mention this original sense of 'open source' in the article and use a reference that does not mention software at all (usenet is bristling with them). Eric Raymond acknowledges this dual sense/appropriation here: "Yes, we're aware of the specialized meaning "open source" has in the intelligence community. This is a feature, not a bug." Jutl (talk) 08:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It appears this page has gone through a major change without any discussion. We should restore the more 'disambiguation' version of the article rather than this heavy software subject. See the changes: here — Dzonatas 20:25, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation & NPOV

The authors split the article after April 2005 into Open source and Open-source software to help disambiguate the software related subjects from the rest of the open source related topics. It was obvious that the software related topics dominated the expression open source, but not enough to completely eradicate any information about open source that is not software based. It was commonly fond that someone wanted to edit the open source article (before the open-source software page was split out) and change words or information to bias it towards software related subjects. That made the article very hard to read. This page, Open Source, became more of a general reference (disambiguation) to several articles, even open-source software. I don't see any comments to justify any reason to erase very informative history and references about open source and especially the many not about software. I vote to return the page back to the more disambiguated version. — Dzonatas 20:47, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] OSD and dubious changes

I notice in the section for the OSD there are links where it says Perens wrote the OSD then later says that Stallman wrote the OSD. The sections is obviously dubious. Here is the version found: here — Dzonatas 21:43, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Since RMS is pretty much for "free software", and not so much for "open source", and he wrote the free software definition for sure, and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't touch something called open source with a 10 foot pole, I guess that's correct. Possibly we can get a source for who wrote the OSD, though? (tries to dig in memory... good grief I used to know this by heart ^^;;) --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:21, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Also, RMS is more about free software rather if it involves open-source contributions or not. See here. — Dzonatas 17:10, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
And, here. — Dzonatas 20:23, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Society and culture section

This unreadable, unsourced muddle that has been inserted shouldn't dominate the article. I'm all for mentioning antecedents and parallel ideas to open source but in the end the article is supposed be about open SOURCE, not blogs and collages. Either that or it should be named something more general. Elsendero (talk) 23:54, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

It needs work, as this page used to be more disambiguated before the last few months where it went heavy on the software side. All the software and software source code issues have a full page at open-source software. What happens is that the software issues dominate and everything else "open source" or related gets taken out because it isn't software. It's easier to read and work with the articles with them separated, and to have open source topics kept in different articles. We can use this article tlo disambiguate, so it really just needs summarizations of other articles. — Dzonatas 01:48, 4 May 2008 (UTC)