Does the 'Spirit' of Open Source Mean Much More Than a License? (techcrunch.com) 58
"Open source can be something of an illusion," writes TechCrunch. "A lack of real independence can mean a lack of agency for those who would like to properly get involved in a project."
Their article makes the case that the "spirit" of open source means more than a license... "Android, in a license sense, is perhaps the most well-documented, perfectly open 'thing' that there is," Luis Villa, co-founder and general counsel at Tidelift, said in a panel discussion at the State of Open Con25 in London this week. "All the licenses are exactly as you want them — but good luck getting a patch into that, and good luck figuring out when the next release even is...."
"If you think about the practical accessibility of open source, it goes beyond the license, right?" Peter Zaitsev, founder of open source database services company Percona, said in the panel discussion. "Governance is very important, because if it's a single corporation, they can change a license like 'that.'" These sentiments were echoed in a separate talk by Dotan Horovits, open source evangelist at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), where he mused about open source "turning to the dark side." He noted that in most cases, issues arise when a single-vendor project decides to make changes based on its own business needs among other pressures. "Which begs the question, is vendor-owned open source an oxymoron?" Horovits said. "I've been asking this question for a good few years, and in 2025 this question is more relevant than ever."
The article adds that in 2025, "These debates won't be going anywhere anytime soon, as open source has emerged as a major focal point in the AI realm." And it includes this quote from Tidelift's co-founder.
"I have my quibbles and concerns about the open source AI definition, but it's really clear that what Llama is doing isn't open source," Villa said. Emily Omier, a consultant for open source businesses and host of the Business of Open Source podcast, added that such attempts to "corrupt" the meaning behind "open source" is testament to its inherent power.
Much of this may be for regulatory reasons, however. The EU AI Act has a special carve-out for "free and open source" AI systems (aside from those deemed to pose an "unacceptable risk"). And Villa says this goes some way toward explaining why a company might want to rewrite the rulebook on what "open source" actually means. "There are plenty of actors right now who, because of the brand equity [of open source] and the regulatory implications, want to change the definition, and that's terrible," Villa said.
Their article makes the case that the "spirit" of open source means more than a license... "Android, in a license sense, is perhaps the most well-documented, perfectly open 'thing' that there is," Luis Villa, co-founder and general counsel at Tidelift, said in a panel discussion at the State of Open Con25 in London this week. "All the licenses are exactly as you want them — but good luck getting a patch into that, and good luck figuring out when the next release even is...."
"If you think about the practical accessibility of open source, it goes beyond the license, right?" Peter Zaitsev, founder of open source database services company Percona, said in the panel discussion. "Governance is very important, because if it's a single corporation, they can change a license like 'that.'" These sentiments were echoed in a separate talk by Dotan Horovits, open source evangelist at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), where he mused about open source "turning to the dark side." He noted that in most cases, issues arise when a single-vendor project decides to make changes based on its own business needs among other pressures. "Which begs the question, is vendor-owned open source an oxymoron?" Horovits said. "I've been asking this question for a good few years, and in 2025 this question is more relevant than ever."
The article adds that in 2025, "These debates won't be going anywhere anytime soon, as open source has emerged as a major focal point in the AI realm." And it includes this quote from Tidelift's co-founder.
"I have my quibbles and concerns about the open source AI definition, but it's really clear that what Llama is doing isn't open source," Villa said. Emily Omier, a consultant for open source businesses and host of the Business of Open Source podcast, added that such attempts to "corrupt" the meaning behind "open source" is testament to its inherent power.
Much of this may be for regulatory reasons, however. The EU AI Act has a special carve-out for "free and open source" AI systems (aside from those deemed to pose an "unacceptable risk"). And Villa says this goes some way toward explaining why a company might want to rewrite the rulebook on what "open source" actually means. "There are plenty of actors right now who, because of the brand equity [of open source] and the regulatory implications, want to change the definition, and that's terrible," Villa said.
GPL cliche (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:GPL cliche (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, in note on this article. The FSF's standpoint is that everything licenced under the GPL is “free software” but the GCC had to have a runtime linking exception added to the licence because without it, it's arguably not free software. Essentially, one can argue that without it, anything it compiles, because it links against it's runtime becomes a derivative product of that runtime, and would thus fall under the GPL, and this would violate the freedom to run the software for any purpose one wishes, including compiling proprietary software. That's the logic behind it, that software whose licence says “This cannot be used to create proprietary software.” is not free at all.
But that's obviously the issue with it, one can argue that compilers without runtime exceptions aren't free. The FSF acknowledging the LaTeX licence as “free” also heavily relied on the build system it uses which allows for easy renaming of files. I believe the licence requires that any fork rename all files which would otherwise not really be free many would argue.
There are of course also other issues like the situation with smartphones nowadays. These run software they aren't physically capable of compiling themselves due to memory limits. Is that still free? One can argue that yes, since one can always compile it on a computer, but let's then up the dimension and think about software which requires a supercomputer to compile. It can be under a free software licence but no one can really practically modify it and then use those modifications.
The FSF's standpoint is that anything licenced under what it considers a free software licence is free, but I don't think it's that simple in practice and as usual, FSF's definitions are more theoretical than practical.
Re: GPL cliche (Score:4)
It is not and never was about one person's freedom. It is about the freedom of the software itself from control, which gives all users the freedom to make changes and then actually use them. Those carve outs were necessary to increase adoption, which maximized freedom by getting people to use the license.
Re: (Score:3)
That neither changes nor addresses the fact that it's the FSF's position that anything licenced under the GPL is free software, and that it also wrote the runtime linking exception into the GCC because they felt that without it, it would not be free software, thus having a self-contradictory view on the matter.
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The goal is to maximize user freedom. If they need an exception to do that, then it's consistent with the goal.
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No one is talking about goals. It's about statements and definitions. They say two things 1) That every software released under the GPL is “free software” and 2) that without the special linking exception, GCC would not be free software. Those two statements are self-contradictory.
Re: GPL cliche (Score:2)
We are all talking about goals, what you are saying just doesn't make sense.
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I wasn't and you replied to me. My post didn't reference anyone's goals. It merely said that the F.S.F. had self-contradictory statements.
Where do you see any “goal” referenced in that original post you replied to? Would you be so kind as to cite that?
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True, and a nice sentiment I agree with but the GPL isnt an Open Source license.
It is a license the Open Source Inititative accepts, but the GPL is a Free Software license with very specific political and philosophical motivations and goals.
Anything licensed under the GPL thus isnt Open Source but is Free Software, compatible with Open Source's goals and ideals.
Thus you can see there are many Open Source licenses incompatible with Free Software and the GPL.
If anyone is to consider the political and philosph
How Can You Have Open Source AI? (Score:3, Interesting)
With ulterior motives and 'controls' within the hearts of the coders and data trainers?
Its like trying to make iced tea with untreated sewage water.
Working as intended (Score:2, Insightful)
good luck getting a patch into that, and good luck figuring out when the next release even is....
Irrelevant. The original author has no obligation to accept your patch, if you really need or want that patch you can fork your own version. If you don't like when the new version gets released, you release your own version - or hire somebody to do that for you if you cannot do it yourself.
Android, in a license sense, is perhaps the most well-documented, perfectly open 'thing' that there is
And that is why we have CyanogenMod, Replicant, /e/, LineageOS, and many others [wikipedia.org], it is working as intended.
The ‘Spirit’ can mean anything. (Score:3)
Does the 'Spirit' of Open Source Mean Much More Than a License?
The ‘Spirit’ of Open Source (or anything else for that matter), can mean damn near anything. Open to interpretation, means exactly that.
This is also why the ‘Spirit’ of the Law, is never going to be your best defense tactic in a courtroom.
People just wanted Unix on PC, that's it (Score:3)
As Linux expanded Unix beyond traditional scientific and engineering users, a market for productivity and entertainment developed. What license thee developers chose would not matter t
Re: (Score:3)
The license mattered a great deal because the licenses helped prevent monopoly abuse. The proprietary copyright and patents associated with Microsoft Office lead to quite a mess creating a fraudulent open standard for OOXML to satisfy government contract demands for open standards, and to continue using MS Word and Excel for government documents.
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Microsoft's standard document in some spots essentially says (or used to say, I haven't kept up) "do what word does here" because they couldn't figure it out either even with the code.
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The license mattered a great deal because the licenses helped prevent monopoly abuse
Only to those embracing the politics/religion. Which is a minority. Most people just wanted Unix. If BSD had not been held up in court it would probably dominate today, having go there first.
Monopoly abuse is a false issue. No BSD contributor has lost access to any of their contributed code.
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They don't have access to the commercial revisions who've used, and sometimes badly broken, the original code. That includes the security violations. Take a good look at the Azure back end SSH implementations, if you can gain access, they've mandated several errors in their implementations.
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They don't have access to the commercial revisions who've used, and sometimes badly broken, the original code. That includes the security violations. Take a good look at the Azure back end SSH implementations, if you can gain access, they've mandated several errors in their implementations.
So what? They have access to the non-commercial they contributed to. They lost nothing.
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They don't have access to correct Microsoft's errors, or direct visibility into what those errors at the code level. They have to deduce, or guess and work around them, lowering the security of the services they use.
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They don't have access to correct Microsoft's errors, ...
They lost nothing, they never had that.
And the GPL does not fix that. Again, you lose nothing that you create when you go BSD rather than GPL.
Re: People just wanted Unix on PC, that's it (Score:4, Informative)
"Take Linux for example, people wanted Unix on PCs. First one there wins, whatever the license. Linux won. The GPL road on Linux's coattails."
Completely wrong. There were multiple BSDs before Linux was even started. Linux passed BSD because people specifically chose to contribute to it because of the license. We know that because multiple major contributors said so.
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NetBSD and FreeBSD both had their first releases in 1993. The BSD lawsuit was settled in 1994.
The first release of Linux was in 1991.
I love the GPL too, but get your facts right.
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Whoops, there was only one release which predated Linux, Net/2. My bad. It came out in June, while the first release of Linux didn't come out until September.
Anyway Net/2 came out in the same year, and it was complete BSD 4.3. It just didn't have an installer. 386BSD which did was based on it; it didn't come out until 1992, though.
Net/2 was a theoretically IP unencumbered release of BSD 4.3, which led (through a lawsuit) to the release of 4.4-BSD-lite which actually was IP unencumbered in March 1994, and wh
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>"There were multiple BSDs before Linux was even started.
Absolutely correct. I was going to post that myself. PLUS there were several commercial Xenix/Unixes too. I know, I used them on X86 machines.
>"Linux passed BSD because people specifically chose to contribute to it because of the license. We know that because multiple major contributors said so."
Yep. And it became a positive domino-effect. Those chose because of the license, then there were more contributors, and Linux (and GNU) became bett
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PLUS there were several commercial Xenix/Unixes too. I know, I used them on X86 machines.
That's true, but I think this is a discussion about the relative merits of differing OSS licenses (which Free Software licenses of course are.) There was Xenix all the way back to the IBM PC XT, but you couldn't ever get sources for it.
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"Take Linux for example, people wanted Unix on PCs. First one there wins, whatever the license. Linux won. The GPL road on Linux's coattails."
Completely wrong. There were multiple BSDs before Linux was even started. Linux passed BSD because people specifically chose to contribute to it because of the license. We know that because multiple major contributors said so.
Nope. Linux got to "working on a PC first" because of lawsuits holding up BSD.
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Linux passed BSD because people specifically chose to contribute to it because of the license. We know that because multiple major contributors said so.
Except that those of us who were alive at that time know it was because the BSD codebase was under legal attack, which is why Linux actually won the 'hearts and minds'. It had nothing to do with GPL vs BSD licensing. It had to do with 'Free' vs Commercial and 'Free' was going to win regardless of BSD vs GPL. GPL only beat BSD license because of Commercial Greed.
Re:People just wanted Unix on PC, that's it (Score:4)
UNIX on PCs predated Linux. FreeBSD was there. As was XENIX, released by Microsoft of all companies. In fact, MS-DOS 2.x took a lot of inspiration from XENIX.
Admittedly, during the 90s The BSDs had a bit of a copyright issue with AT&T, but UNIX on PC was a thing.
Heck, Linus Torvalds was inspired by MINIX, which was modelled on UNIX, and that Linus himself has said.
And GNU stuff was on MS-DOS for ages, - DJGPP predated LInux as a programming environment for MS-DOS.
UNIX on PC was a thing. It wasn't a very popular thing because PCs generally sucked at the time, but even Apple offered it in the late 80s (A/UX), predating Linux.
Linux likely got lucky being at the right place and at the right time - when PCs stopped sucking, and 0.1 happened at a time when it was stupidly simple to work on so people started messing around with it. Of course, it also really exploded thanks to PCs getting things like multimedia and CD-ROMs, as well as Windows 95 and the Internet making such things more popular.
Re:People just wanted Unix on PC, that's it (Score:4)
UNIX on PCs predated Linux. FreeBSD was there. As was XENIX, released by Microsoft of all companies. In fact, MS-DOS 2.x took a lot of inspiration from XENIX.
FreeBSD wasn't around when Linux came out. Dr, Dobb's had a series on 386BSD around that time which IIRC led to FreeBSD.
Unix on PCs was $$$, often as much as the PC. The compiler was often another chunk of $. They also required a 386, Minix and later, Coherent, ran on the '86 and '286 systems we had and were under $200. We all wanted the Unix environment, so we tried to get as close as we could.
Heck, Linus Torvalds was inspired by MINIX, which was modelled on UNIX, and that Linus himself has said.
Absolutely. Many of us were using Minix. It had limitations that prevented it from being real Unix.
1st, the memory model is 64k I&D. Many Unix tools did not fit. Especially the GNU tools everyone wanted. There were patches for 386s that did allow different memory models, but most of us didn't have them.
2nd, You could not distribute the code. Instead, cdiffs were distributed and you had to patch the code which was messy. There was no packaging beyond tar and compress.
3rd Patches were not really accepted into Minix & those 386 patches never went in back then. Minix was created to teach students who didn't have 386s, not hobbyists trying to have Unix.
And GNU stuff was on MS-DOS for ages, - DJGPP predated LInux as a programming environment for MS-DOS.
I don't remember if DJGPP was there at the start of Linux. Most of us running Dos didn't have 386s and most of the GNU tools were not there. There were the GNUish utils that ported some tools (not emacs!). I can't remember if they needed a 286.
I found Dos and all the public domain ports of Unix tools to be as good as Minix mostly. In the end, both were toy Unixen, not the real thing.
Linux likely got lucky being at the right place and at the right time - when PCs stopped sucking, and 0.1 happened at a time when it was stupidly simple to work on so people started messing around with it. Of course, it also really exploded thanks to PCs getting things like multimedia and CD-ROMs, as well as Windows 95 and the Internet making such things more popular.
Definitely. 386s came out and started to get affordable too. When I got my 486 in '91 ($5k!), I downloaded 386BSD and it didn't boot. Linux (0.95) did and I never looked back. I suspect most were like me.
My system didn't have a soundcard or CD-ROM. Those would have added > $300. Dial up internet was also not available. I was able to go to a local college computer lab and later worked for a company that was on the internet before everyone was able to get internet.
Linux also allowed others to contribute. Minix didn't back then and neither did 386BSD.
BSD had the AT&T lawsuit over it so there was reluctance to distribute. Some of the core developers formed a commercial product, BSD386 and I think they were sued as well.
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UNIX on PCs predated Linux. FreeBSD was there.
Nope. FreeBSD was held up by lawsuits and fell behind. Linux got to "running well" first.
As was XENIX, released by Microsoft of all companies. In fact, MS-DOS 2.x took a lot of inspiration from XENIX.
Xenix was too expensive.
And GNU stuff was on MS-DOS for ages,
Still DOS, not unix.
DJGPP predated LInux as a programming environment for MS-DOS.
Still DOS, admitted 32-bit app is better, but not unix.
UNIX on PC was a thing.
No, it was not. Not until Linux. A couple user land commands does not count.
but even Apple offered it in the late 80s (A/UX)
Not on PC hardware. Macs are not PCs in the context being discussed.
when PCs stopped sucking
No, PCs stopping to suck impaired Linux. Ie Windows NT. NT is why the Year of Linux on the Desktop is a meme joke. NT stopped Linux's appeal beyond those hardcore traditional Unix
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UNIX on PCs predated Linux.
It's not about when projects started. Its about getting to "works well on a PC".
Linux got to that point first. Largely due to BSD being help up by lawsuits.
I was following and trying out both. For example FreeBSD was still crashing when Linux was actually useable.
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> The ‘Spirit’ of Open Source (or anything else for that matter), can mean damn near anything. Open to interpretation, means exactly that.
Agreed, which is why I prefer Free Software, as they clearly lay out the spirit and goals with very little room to "wiggle" regarding interpretation, depending how closely you follow Richards example.
I'm actually leaning more and more closer to his example every day as things develop in ways I really cant stand these days.
Forks (Score:4, Insightful)
Android can be forked by anyone or any organization at any time if they think they have a better patch management routine.
That is why the license matters, not the "spirit".
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Correction:
Most of Android can be forked.
No (Score:1)
You know what the "spirit" involved is by what license is chosen.
What a pointless argument to have (Score:4, Informative)
The "spirit", that is, the intent of the developer to share, is the driver here; the license is just a library that codifies the said spirit into legal words, so that it can't be attacked by malicious players by the courts later on, as we've seen happen repeatedly in the land of the litigation.
It is as simple as that.
Beyond Android (Score:4, Informative)
> "A lack of real independence can mean a lack of agency for those who would like to properly get involved in a project."
Their article makes the case that the "spirit" of open source means more than a license... "
They use the Android example. I say Chromium is just as bad in that regard. Illustrated through lack of outside control/steering/participation, ulterior motives, conflicts of interest, control by a huge/powerful corporation, control by a [in many ways] monopolistic corporation, and more interest in creating/forcing "standards" than cooperating on their creation. Sure, there are many other such examples, but Android and Chromium together are just *huge*. At least in the mobile market, there is a competitor with a large/strong competition to Android (iOS, of course). Not so with browsers anymore. For multiplatform use, there is only Chrom* and Firefox... and Google has decimated Firefox user share, mostly through many years of aggressive marketing, Android (bundling and almost requiring Chrome; same with ChromeOS), and their many cloud platforms suspiciously "favoring" Chrom*.
With control of the Web and its standards, privacy, freedom, and security hanging precariously in jeopardy, I think Chromium is the best example of a "not in the spirit of open source." It is a project with far too many people depending on it, without adequate competition, and with essentially zero chance of it being effectively ever forked (because it would be unmaintainable).
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Microsoft knew this. They embraced and extended the HTML standard to control it. Google knows this. They turned the international engineering standard into a "living document" which is code for whatever Google thinks of on the day
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Anyone that wants can take the Chromium, Android, etc code and make their own product with it. Why should those that dump millions of dollars of their own money in to development not have a right to decide the direction of the project they fund and promote? They didn't even need to make the source available, but they have so that others that desire to put in their own equity could fork it if they want.
The problem isn't the corporations controlling these projects. The problem is the freeloaders that both
Re:Beyond Android (Score:4)
>"Anyone that wants can take the Chromium, Android, etc code and make their own product with it."
Yes, and then hand much of their control and power over to Google. As I said, it probably can't be forked because nobody could maintain it. Thus, these companies are simply BASING their product on the changing code that Google solely controls. Thus, they are now 'slaves'.
>"Why should those that dump millions of dollars of their own money in to development not have a right to decide the direction of the project they fund and promote?"
Because in THIS case they it is an evil, near-monopoly doing evil things with it. If they weren't, then I would agree with you.
>"As for Firefox, they wouldn't still exist if not for Google."
I don't agree with that statement. They might not exist NOW, but they certainly would have continued to exist before Chromium. And before Chromium, there were several independent and healthy code bases for browsers, Firefox was just one of them. And they were mostly all working together to adhere to and advance true standards.
I *will* give credit to Google Chromium forcing Mozilla to get out of lazy mode and start revamping code (which became Firefox's Quantum project) which allowed Firefox to quickly catch up to the speed of Chromium (which was, at the time, much faster). But that is what true competition brings- innovation, choice, diversity, improvement, more user-responsiveness, better security, etc. But once Google then started aggressively promoting Chrome (and then kinda "forcing it" in subtle ways) on the sites that almost every user was constantly exposed to, and to tons of related developers, open competition ended and predatory monopolistic practices began. One browser after another either folded or moved to the "dark side", until where we are today- with a SINGLE non-Google-controlled/based multiplatform browser competitor left, Firefox.
>"Google has not tried to kill them (although keeping them alive might have been in their own self interest to maintain 'competition' and avoid scrutiny)."
Google decimated Firefox to a tiny fraction of market share (and most of it not through merit) and then pumped just enough money into it so there is an appearance of competition, correct. And that money does give Google platforming to 200+ million Firefox user's eyes (although I bet a lot of those users immediately switch search engines), so there is a service provided, it isn't charity. It is completely self-serving in most every way.
If, like me, you are not happy with Google controlling the web, I encourage a bit of activism- use Firefox yourself on all your machines. Encourage others to do so as well. Overall, it is just as fast as any Chrom* while also being just as, or more secure and capable, but with better privacy and more user-control. You vote with your browser. Every web server sees what you are using. And if you encounter a site that "promotes" Chrom* or nags you, then fire off a reasoned response to that company/site's webmaster and/or marketing team. If you are a developer- make sure your sites and web-products are actually standards-based and work properly under Firefox (and Safari, too). Testing only against [whatever combinations of] Chrom* is not enough. Telling customers/users that you "recommend Chrom*" or works best in "Chrom*" on the site, or "download Chome*" in specifications, on your site, or by your customer support, is a clear indication of doing something very wrong.
Free Software has a spirit, Open Source not (Score:1, Troll)
I truly believe that free software is the best for humanity.
Open Source, on the other hand, is a term coined by capitalistic companies to create an illusion of freedom while it actually isn’t.
Re: Free Software has a spirit, Open Source not (Score:2)
Nobody knows who first used the term "open source" commercially, but the first recorded use that I've found was in 1985. (Look for the UNIX1985 video on archive.org.)
It's likely you're correct about the purpose, as the prior use was in the intelligence community, which means the likeliest first use related to software was by a defense contractor.
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> I truly believe that free software is the best for humanity.
Agreed.
I heavily agree with RMS and his speeches, I do disagree with him on some of his other political issues, but not all.
I'm especially interested in copyright reform too.
I'm still a bit flexible regarding non-free firmware as I have a slightly different philosphy. I consider the ROM/firmware of an expansion card part of the card. I dont mind it being a black box, I dont mind that.
What I do mind is having loadable firmware, this means the
RISC V isn't open source (Score:2)
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I agree with you. It should really be called an Open Standard. That is what we used to say back in the late days of UNIX(tm) dominance. You could have competing implementations that interoperated gracefully whether they were OSS or not.
The "spirit" is pretty simple (Score:2)
The differences in open source flavors come from definition of "use": share your software(with or without you changed code), sell your software, share changed code publically or privately, etc.
All the argument is really about open/free software not open so
Other criteria (Score:2)
There is a notion of DITO, deveopment in the open.
No on ever said that open source is enough.
The difference (Score:2)
The spirit of open source used to be CentOS. Now it is Rocky and Alma.
FUD (Score:2)
The "spirit" of Open Source was to hijack Free Software. We had Free Software licenses like GPL and everything was fine, then those guys came with their scare campaign about how businesses won't embrace a "Free" license and how "Open Source" is so much business friendly. And now we have the most Open Source projects controlled by big commercial entities.
Interesting the table is turning? (Score:2)
So, the Open Source lot are starting to think like us Free Software users?
I thought I'd never see the day.
Llama isn't open source (Score:2)
But Mistral (Apache 2), Phi (MIT) and DeepSeek (MIT) are.