Google WebM Calls "Open Source" Into Question 185
snydeq writes "As open source becomes mainstream, vendors are under pressure to market their offerings using the 'open source' brand to the highest degree possible — a trend that may eventually degrade the meaning of 'open source' as we know it, Savio Rodrigues writes. Witness WebM, which Google has positioned as an open alternative to H.264. After examining the software license, some in the open source community have questioned whether WebM should be classified as open source software. Google did not use an OSI-approved license for WebM, meaning that, at least in theory, WebM cannot be considered open source under the OSD — the 'gold standard' by which many government and business open source policies are defined. Moreover, when prodded for OSI review, Google required that the OSI agree to 'changes to how OSI does licenses' as a precursor to submitting a license for OSI review and approval. 'When Google, one of the largest supporters of open source, goes out and purposefully circumvents the OSI, what signal does this send to other vendors? How important is using an OSI-approved license likely to be in the future if other vendors follow Google's lead?'"
An anonymous reader adds: "It turns out that libvpx, Google's VP8 library, isn't compatible with the GPLv2. Google is apparently aware of the problem and working on a solution.
You want open? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I sense scaremongering (Score:3, Interesting)
It's just BSD + a patent license.
OSI doesn't own a trademark on "Open Source" either and if they did, it would probably be ruled generic.
Re:I sense scaremongering (Score:4, Interesting)
I personally would wait for the FSF to make a statement about GPL3 compatibility, reading both sections from both licenses does not give me a 100% sure feeling that it is necessarily so.
Re:is the source avaiable for download / inspectio (Score:1, Interesting)
Definitely not open source.
this is my point... it IS open source when "open" is used as an adjective and "source" is used as a noun. you are using "open source" as if it meant something different than the sum of it's parts. it might not be the "open source" that you're talking about, but you can't truthfully say "it's not open source"... the source was made open.
Re:"Open source" is getting diluted everywhere (Score:3, Interesting)
That's actually a much older use of the term open source in the intelligence community. "Open source intelligence" means getting your intelligence from open, i.e. public, sources. It's used in intelligence predates the "coining" of the term for use with software. [citation needed.]
I much prefer just calling free and "open source" software, because without the source code, it isn't really "soft" ware, is it? Well, sure, you can hack the binaries, but that isn't as useful.