[ThenAsNow]

> They deceive users and leach off of the good name of open source

How do they do that if they don't call themselves open source (or "Open Source (TM)" if you prefer) in the first place?

Regardless, something needs to be done about the sustainability gap in open source other than writing messages like what's linked. The inability of your project to incorporate someone else's code shouldn't consign the rest of us to not have the benefits of access to that someone else's code outside of a proprietary binary.

[josephcsible]

> How do they do that if they don't call themselves open source (or "Open Source (TM)" if you prefer) in the first place?

First of all, some of them DO call themselves that even though they unambiguously aren't. And even for the ones that don't, they usually try to sound as similar as possible to it and downplay the differences.

> Regardless, something needs to be done about the sustainability gap in open source other than writing messages like what's linked.

That feels like the politician's fallacy. We need to do something, and switching to fauxpen source is something, but that doesn't mean we need to switch to fauxpen source.

> The inability of your project to incorporate someone else's code shouldn't consign the rest of us to not have the benefits of access to that someone else's code outside of a proprietary binary.

It's not just one project that can't. If a given bit of code isn't open source, then NO open source projects can incorporate it.

[ThenAsNow]

> First of all, some of them DO call themselves that even though they unambiguously aren't. And even for the ones that don't, they usually try to sound as similar as possible to it and downplay the differences.

There was understandably uproar about things like the "Commons Clause" and similar attempts to retrofit obligations to pay onto open source licenses. I have no disagreement with rejecting these as misrepresentations of open source. But if no such misrepresentation takes place, this line of objection is bogus. I gave an example of one license that does not misrepresent itself in such a way. I'm sure there are others and if not, attempts should perhaps be made to develop others, just as we have multiple open source licenses available.

>> Regardless, something needs to be done about the sustainability gap in open source other than writing messages like what's linked.

> That feels like the politician's fallacy. We need to do something, and switching to fauxpen source is something, but that doesn't mean we need to switch to fauxpen source.

I regret my phrasing, "something needs to be done," which does indeed sound like a politician. So let me rephrase. There is an axis, with proprietary secret source code and FOSS anchoring the ends. This axis is a good proxy for monetizability, but the axis itself is about freedom. With secret source, no user gets any benefit from the source. Source available, is, to me, a genuinely constructive attempt to address the need for developers to be compensated, while still giving users many of the benefits of access to the source.

I don't think source available is going to be something we "switch to" so much as, if some developers need income from the code they put out there, this is a far more user-centric option than telling everyone to download binaries for platforms they may or may not use and submit themselves to intrusive license checks. If you want to get a job at a RedHat or Collabora or try to have your employer cover your open source time instead, more power to you, source available certainly doesn't stand in the way of that.

> It's not just one project that can't. If a given bit of code isn't open source, then NO open source projects can incorporate it.

Open source projects have no hope of incorporating secret source software either. At least with source available, users can look at the code, make changes, build it themselves, and if they fit whatever "gratis" criteria are a part of the license, they don't have to pay either.