Is it just me or is passing off things that aren’t FOSS as FOSS a much bigger thing lately than it was previously.
Don’t get me wrong. I remember Microsoft’s “shared source” thing from back in the day. So I know it’s not a new thing per se. But it still seems like it’s suddenly a bigger problem than it was previously.
LLaMa, the large language model, is billed by Meta as “Open Source”, but isn’t.
I just learned today about “Grayjay,” a video streaming service client app created by Louis Rossmann. Various aticles out there are billing it as “Open Source” or “FOSS”. It’s not. Grayjay’s license doesn’t allow commercial redistribution or derivative works. Its source code is available to the general public, but that’s far from sufficient to qualify as “Open Source.” (That article even claims “GrayJay is an open-source app, which means that users are free to alter it to meet their specific needs,” but Grayjay’s license grants no license to create modified versions at all.) FUTO, the parent project of Grayjay pledges on its site that “All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open-source or develop a plan to eventually become so.” I hope that means that they’ll be making Grayjay properly Open Source at some point. (Maybe once it’s sufficiently mature/tested?) But I worry that they’re just conflating “source available” and “Open Source.”
I’ve also seen some sentiment around that “whatever, doesn’t matter if it doesn’t match the OSI’s definition of Open Source. Source available is just as good and OSI doesn’t get a monopoly on the term ‘Open Source’ anyway and you’re being pedantic for refusing to use the term ‘Open Source’ for this program that won’t let you use it commercially or make modifications.”
It just makes me nervous. I don’t want to see these terms muddied. If that ultimately happens and these terms end up not really being meaningful/helpful, maybe the next best thing is to only speak in terms of concrete license names. We all know the GPL, MIT, BSD, Apache, Mozilla, etc kind of licenses are unambiguously FOSS licenses in the strictest sense of the term. If a piece of software is under something that doesn’t have a specific name, then the best we’d be able to do is just read it and see if it matches the OSI definition or Free Software definition.
Until then, I guess I’ll keep doing my best to tell folks when something’s called FOSS that isn’t FOSS. I’m not sure what else to do about this issue, really.
My response might be a hot take 🥲
Personally:
I had a look through the license at launch, and also watched the entirety of Louis’ video, in both of which I didn’t come across any restrictions imposed on an end user to modify the app for their own needs or redistribution - just no commercial redistribution or redistribution with ill intent. I keep seeing the restrictions mentioned though and genuinely cannot find anything to back them up…
In the original launch video Louis does explicitly state that the app is not free, but he does erroneously refer to it as open source. Mainstream tech outlets conflating foss/source-available is likely down to journalists just not aware of the distinction, or just taking his word for it
IMO since the app is Louis’ project that is primarily being financed by donating his personal money to FUTO (AFAICT) it would be immediately obvious to a follower of his that the app is not going to be open source as per the OSI definition. Looking at what happened with NewPipe clones when he mentioned it on his channel, and bad actors in local governments sabotaging his attempts to get a bulletproof R2R passed in many states, his overall trust level is probably pretty low - the last thing someone like that would want on a personal project is loads of strangers contributing, bad actors ripping it off trying to make a quick buck, or even worse redistributing it with malware.
Leaving the OSS conflation aspect for a second, Grayjay is a very big and complex app, with integrated dev tools and a comprehensive plugin system (each are individually GPL licensed if i’m not mistaken). IMO chances are if someone wants to modify the app, they should be looking at a GPL plugin to introduce their functionality in, rather than modifying the source - as would be required with something like NewPipe. They have a whole youtube video going through how to develop a plugin, and how it’s architected.
If/when Grayjay is transitioned to FOSS, I imagine it’ll be difficult for the community to maintain it due to the complexity… It’ll probably need to be broken down into several smaller manageable parts, such as projects like Home Assistant, LibreOffice, and Node-Red. Something like NewPipe, which is literally just the Android app and extractor library, would be much easier for unpaid volunteer contributors to maintain IMO.
I personally disagree slightly with the current definition of “open source”, because it hides so much nuance that isn’t readily evident to someone unfamiliar with the community. A lot of people do not make the connection of “open source” = OSI, they think “open source” = source is out in the open. FOSS and FLOSS are way more explicit in meaning from my perspective
It’s by default that you can’t redistribute modified versions. You need explicit permission to do so. Furthermore, that license is revocable. So let’s say you invest a lot of time into making modifications - at any point, they can revoke the license, and you suddenly find yourself forbidden from distributing your modified version, too/
That’s not really relevant. There’s no requirement in open source on how the projects are to be maintained.
It’s up to him whether he accepts strangers contributing. That has nothing to do with whether it’s open source. If he didn’t want contributions, he could disallow any pull requests on an open source software - or conversely, if there are people willing to contribute to a non-open-source project, there’s theoretically nothing stopping that. Redistributing it with malware is not really a problem open-source projects have, and malware writers wouldn’t care for the license anyway.
The only thing is would be the somewhat relevant would be making a quick buck part, but that’s only been a problem for people using MIT/BSD license.
Finally, I’ll never understand why people would want to name software after dental string…
“Open-source” is not up for interpretation. The word was coined by this definition being made public: https://opensource.org/osd/
At least in the U.S. any right granted exclusively to the copyright holder and not mentioned in the license is reserved by the copyright holder. So if the license doesn’t allow something that absent a license would constitute copyright infringement, then… well… it’s not allowed.
In the licence, they say “subject to the terms of this license, we grant you a non-transferable, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to access and use the code solely for the purposes of review, compilation and non-commercial distribution.” “Review” is defined elsewhere in the license and seems pretty explicitly and purposefully not to include making altered versions of the work.
A modified version of it would be a “derivative work” under copyright law, which would constitute copyright infringement (even if not distributed, according to the research I’ve done) if the license didn’t allow it. So as far as I can tell from the license, even cloning the source of Grayjay and changing the background color would constitute copyright infringement.
And, of course, just above, it also says “non-commercial distribution.” So selling a copy of the source or compiled code would infringe.
(Also, the section where the license says “we may change the rules at any time” basically makes the license completely useless.)
All that to say if you’re looking for anything to back up claims of restrictions, it’s all there in the license.
Honestly, I haven’t watched Louis Rossmann’s video about Grayjay but I wouldn’t be satisfied to just trust what he says when the license says something else. (Still, I do intend to watch it when I get a sec if I can. Or did YouTube take it down and make it hard to find? Who knows.)
Open Source (or FOSS or Free Software or whatever) doesn’t mean there’s no gatekeeper. The vast majority of Open Source projects allow contributions only after an approval process.
I get that. I’d still rather see it properly FOSS, though.
I used to pay attention to things in the Minetest development community. There were some cases where random folks made Android ports (before Minetest officially supported Android) and sold them on the Play Store.
(Which seems like a good argument for copyleft but that’s none of my business. Lol.)
I would imagine any outfit sleazy enough to distribute “malware” wouldn’t be deterred by a little copyright infringement. I wouldn’t think a source-available project could prevent that with license terms to any extent that a FOSS project couldn’t.
(Or do you mean something more like I’d call “antifeatures” – not illegal, but privacy invading or DRM’d whatever?)
I’m not sure why you think a transition to FOSS would require any change in how it’s developed.
I’m less concerned about whether people can actually materially make it do things the authors didn’t anticipate now than I am whether I can be certain that if/when it gets enshittified or abandoned or whatever someone can fork it and the world goes on our merry way as if nothing was amiss. Like has been done with OpenOffice/Libreoffice, MPlayer/MPlayer2/MPV, and others. As the license is now, we 100% cannot without rewriting at least the core from scratch in a cleanroom kind of fashion.
Again, why after it transitioned to FOSS would it suddenly have to be maintained by a “community” of “unpaid volunteer contributors” any more so than it is now?
For clarity, FUTO is privately funded by an independently wealthy person, not Louis. Louis is an employee who believes in the mission.
He’s not donating money to FUTO. He works for them. They give him money.