The promise of Open Source was Free Software.
Open Source takes it's name from the practice that the source code should be open in all senses. It should be Open for Inspection. It should be Open for Contributions and It should be Open for Repurposing for Alternate Uses.
But like the first communes and every commune since, it is broken up by questions of who owns what and who should decide. One piece of property that no open source project will surrender is their trademark. Trademark becomes the camels nose under the tent. Here the camel is asserting that the software is Closed for some purposes.
More of the Closed camel follows because there must be some entity to govern both the use of the property and development of the software. If no one became rich or famous, a minimal platonic democracy could have formed and it would somehow work. Now everyone has an eye on cashing in big on their Open Source project. Often the projects license have terms that allow the owners to take back the software.
Open Source takes it's name from the practice that the source code should be open in all senses. It should be Open for Inspection. It should be Open for Contributions and It should be Open for Repurposing for Alternate Uses.
But like the first communes and every commune since, it is broken up by questions of who owns what and who should decide. One piece of property that no open source project will surrender is their trademark. Trademark becomes the camels nose under the tent. Here the camel is asserting that the software is Closed for some purposes.
More of the Closed camel follows because there must be some entity to govern both the use of the property and development of the software. If no one became rich or famous, a minimal platonic democracy could have formed and it would somehow work. Now everyone has an eye on cashing in big on their Open Source project. Often the projects license have terms that allow the owners to take back the software.
The GNU License is another common closing. Because this license grows virally you must always be worried that the free software you use will ultimately cost you your software.
A minor variation of open source software closing are projects that require extensive signing over of rights. Fortunately the irritation factor has caused these project to wither.
The takeaway from all of this is every Open Source project has some significant Closed aspects to it. As such we should borrow a term from mathematics and label projects that are significantly closed as Clopen Source. And projects which use the GNU License or have take back provision should present themselves as Clopen Source projects.
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