Using the term "open source" – a response to everything!

46 thoughts on “Using the term "open source" – a response to everything!”

• Element (matrix client) is not bad but it keeps freezing up on grapheneos and even on a stock Pixel I keep for business purposes. As far as I can tell, the alternatives are worse. Telegram and Signal work better, but are not what I want

• As someone who works in software, baseball hat dude's characterization of the situation (including the Wayland example) rings very true. I hope this stuff goes somewhere.

• Unreal Engine doesn't call themselves open source, despite the fact that the engine's entire source tree is on GitHub, because there's a shared understanding that "open-source" implies "you can use this commercially with no strings attached" and that doesn't hold true for Unreal Engine – if you use it commercially, you have to pay Epic 5% of your game's earnings. If Epic stared calling UE open source, I guarantee you there will be a very entertaining Twitter riot the next day.

  It seems to me you're after something very similar with your license, but you want to have your cake and eat it too. If you want to build up goodwill, this is not a good move.

• I feel like "Accessible Source" might roll off the tongue better and better explain it's intention.

• Open source wins in foundation software, not in end user software.
  I personally believe it's a lack of care from users about their rights and freedoms and I believe you will face similar issues, but I wish you the best with this.

  Btw, thanks a lot for changing the term! This has definitely restored a lot of trust.

• 1:06:24 So before you guys said "no crypto shit" but then here you say you can have a crypto link for donations. Can you elaborate exactly what you mean by this?

  Like, I'm very well familiar that cryptocurrency is mostly just outright scams, but at the same time I know my community developed and community defined social construct that we call Bitcoin is not and so we have this re-implementation of RSS basically called NOSTR where your post can have a Bitcoin payment link in it and we call that "zaps". So would that fall under "no crypto shit" or you know what I mean?

• I wholeheartedly agree with paying for an app to avoid ads. I'd really like to pay for Photopea to remove the ads, but I can find no way to even contact them to ask about it.

• Finally. And thanks. I still think non-FOSS licenses are non-ethical but at least you're not miss-representing anything anymore.

  On the other hand those rug-pull clauses how you call it or CLA how other company are calling them is just sensible way to do in case you'll figure out in future your license is not great fit for your usecase. and at least in case of FOSS licenses I don't think they are a bad thing. It allows you to change license if you need and if software is FOSS and you do a dirty rugpull, the community can always take over.

  And about Stallman and `open source`. Stallman wasn't trying to coin nor change of meaning of term `open source`, he doesn't like OSI, Open source, or anything about it.

• You are so based man.

• I understand your dillemma, what i will say as this video comes off not as a rug pull, but a warning of a future impending rug pull. The forced arbitration clause didn't help either. Open source is the communism of software, and it doesn't work there either. There is a reason why the right-to-repair movement chose the red fist as the logo.

• machine learning models don't even have source code. this is beyond stupid.

• Appreciate all the inside into the intent with the term Open Source at FUTO. Everything seems reasonable. The Functional Source License is close to what you may be going for.

• Trust comes from consistency. Louis has been consistent all theses years and I build my trust in his views only based on that. I really need to learn more and understand FUTO initiative better.

• @FUTOTECHand @rossmanngroup, This is GREAT! Listening to the two most influential people at FUTO sit and talk about their personal, technical and ethical philosophies is such a great insight into how the company will do business. It has a very WAN Show feel without being 3 hours long. Eron has a been a great person to listen/learn from, for me, and Louis is always fun to listen to and his humble, yet pitbull ish, attitude will help keep operations of FUTO on the up and up as the company grows. Well done and I look forward to seeing how this unfolds in the future and utilizing/developing software partnered with FUTO. Please do more of this content together as FUTO moves forward and grows.

• Multiplayer games is an instance where I prefer closed source over open source.

• I generally call these sorts of licenses a "dual license". I'm fine with commercial + source available for non-commercial use.
  I'm a programmer and I know and understand the need to monetize and protect the project. There are quite a few projects that work this way.

• I disagree with open source having to be allowed to be used however you want. I can see the source code, I call it open source. If I am allowed to use the code however I want, then I call it FOSS, Free and Open source. Otherwise I see no reason to have the phrase/term FOSS. What's the point of calling it free when all open source is free?

• Once a new license comes out and is polished, I'd very much like to use it, I love linux and open source, but I can't stand the idea of Microsoft or Google stealing my code and giving me the middle finger

• There have been people in the past who tried to subvert software freedoms in the past, look at the "ethical source" people. It's clearly not your intention, and I am thankful for what you are doing. Thank you for clearing up the misunderstanding.

• It's the Unity monetization model. I don't know what the name of it is, but I definitely think it should have one.

• "Source first" is brilliant, if you ask me. It makes it clear that you guys are leading with the source. "Show me the source code, and then we'll talk." I could see myself going all-in on this term.

  It also helps squash some potential for abuse that I've been worried about with "source available". EG: Some scummy company selling source code at a high premium with a restrictive license could probably get away with saying it's "source available", even though the spirit of that software wouldn't be FUTO-y at all.

  As much good as Stallman does, he's always a hindrance when it comes to clarity and vernacular. I've always hated that Stallman calls libre software "free software". Even he admits that it needs to be re-explained over and over again to distinguish "libre" free from "gratis" free. It makes sense how that Stallman quote at 5:09 could make him think calling it "open source" was a good idea.

• Nothing lasts longer than a temporary fix that works.

• I cannot believe how brain cell deficient some of the people commenting to futo are about how they dont trust the license, I bet the majority of them are using software owned by one of the big tech companies.

• This “license” has to be the most moronic license I have ever seen. So what if I do want to use any of your software in a commercial setting? I will pay cool, but smoll pp Lois here and his daddy billionaire have the right to outright deny me service, or name an outrageous price to tell me to F off.

  This is not about funding developers, this is about smol pp menlets wanting to maintain total control.

  Name it “The smol pp License”

• Hi, I'm the person that created a blogpost which pleaded you to not redefine open source (which was covered by Brodie).
  Just want to say thanks for being receptive to the community feedback and making a change.

  Listening to Eron's thoughts, I understand that many may not have cared about this, but those that do will disproportionately fall towards the category of folks that develop open source software, and have contributed to the reputation of that term.
  I respect it's easy to initially see open source as just open for viewing, I made the same assumption and most others will do since open source is so common in the software world, and you usually first come across it followed by a link to an open repo, but those rights of open use, modification and distribution are so important even if that's not as easy to realise until you get deeper into publishing or seeing examples of those rules keeping software open.
  I totally agree the definition is with the community, but I still feel it's important to defend and educate on that existing definition since those core values are important to many, and with any reduced term like "open source" or "free software" or "source first" there's always going to be an education step leading to the full meaning.

  I really do respect that by its nature open source does not work for everything, since the freedoms it brings can inherently bring challenges, but I don't think that means we have to sacrifice core freedoms of open source to suit that.
  Establishing and educating on new open source adjacent options like what you're doing here I think is a much better direction overall to offer both options without conflicting with, or changing, what already exists.

  Thanks again, and all the best with your future goals!

• Nice try Louis, the picture covering your face also looks underslept

• I love how the infotainment in my car is built with all sorts of open source GPL stuff. I have the code, but i cannot modify it on my system, because everything is encrypted and locked bootloader. The DMCA forbids breaking this lock.

  Who owns this thing? Me or Toyota?

• Love Eron's joke about conspiracies! "Nobody's organized enough." 😆

  I hope you'll hire remote and internationally at some point. (And have a suitable role for me.)
  You seem like a really great bunch.

• So how about a system where if FUTO decides to drop something, it (perhaps after a time) becomes actual open source(would allow retaining copyright, the credit where credit is due; MIT or BSD)/straight up public domain(loss of copyrights, meaning loss of requiring people to include credit if they don't want to)?

• People who haven't even paid making feature requests – how do you know that? I'm not sure that I used the same email address to register on zulip as I used to pay for grayjay. Sure as hell didn't use the same name. I'm not sure whether there are many platforms where I use the same name…
  (I would by the way totally understand if you decided to create separate spaces for people who actually paid for your product. That statement just sounded odd to me given that I don't think you reliably track paying users across products/apps?)

• It seems to me that most developers, me included, always thought that open-source is simply having access to the source code. Further licensing can be different, I never really cared. I always thought that it means that I can build my own version, fork it and use it for free, but the original owner can totally forbid commercial use. I never really cared about idealists, people who master operating systems and brag about their Linux skills, instead of developing applications. Developers want money for their work, it's really that simple. Huge corporations are the place to go for everyone who grew tired of sometimes really toxic open-source community. These people sometimes have problems with understanding basics of how the world works. Being moral and good won't pay my rent, future for my children and retirement. You guys seem to understand it and try to find a very reasonable middle ground. This is a chance for good quality and transparent software made with its users in mind, not B2B partners and users as a product.

• Hi. Me Again. Software Developer with 25 years of professional experience working at FANG. You might have seen some of my videos. You deleted my other comment as I can no longer find it.

  The license I see is simply unacceptable to me as a developer who is your target demographic. As a software developer, I want to make money, or I want to do good. It would be great to do both but we don't have that opportunity.

  Your asking devs like me me to work for you for free and not allowing us to have a fair exchange of value. Your asking us to work for you and write code without being able to leverage it for our own projects. You want us to have only costs for a project, while building up your company for free using our labor. You seem to want to take our work, without paying us, based on a strict reading of the license as it takes away our default rights.

  That is unacceptable.

  If you really want devs to be the ones making money, why does the license focus on taking away the devs rights?

• Why is Louis' face covered by a photo of his own?

• Frankly, I don't have a problem with a restriction on commercial use and still using the term "open source", as it means the source code is open, and freely available, it suggests nothing else.
  But if "open source" feels like the wrong term, then perhaps the term "open access license" or "personal use license" might serve better?
  Just something to suggest that it's free and open for personal use.

• Louis, I have a question for you: What kind of situations couldn't be addressed with the AGPLv3 and a trademarked brand? As far as I know, if someone takes AGPL code and makes applications that are then sold while hiding the fact that the license is AGPL, I can imagine multiple situations:
  – That the person doesn't change the code or the brand. In that case they can be sued for trademark infringement.
  – That the person changes the brand but not the code: If they don't advertise the fact that it's AGPL and that it's free to distribute they're breaking the license and can be sued.
  – That the person also changes the code: In addition to the above they have to publish any change they have done. And distributions and F-droid are free to freely distribute builds of the application with any undesirable changes (like ads and tracking) removed.

• Long time ago software was distributed on disk drives, and released once a year. It was easies to provide the source so users could fix bugs themselves, cos all users was programmers anyway.
  Open Source is distribution feature, not tablets with 10 commandments.

• i use my opportunity of commenting to express my support of AlcorSalvador's idea of "Public Source".Free for the Public, not free for Business.

• Really glad to see these discussions being productive.

  There is a lot of thought and care going into FUTO, and it really shows.
  I am so glad to see it.

• I think the reason the meaning of open source changed because of Linux and other great projects that are open and free software. That's why the community now has a different definition to the traditional.

  The amount of people who care about this can probably be gaged by looking at the support for open source social media accounts. The people that care about this the most are also the people who develop the most.

• The only reason for software to be open source is the ease of fixing bugs.

• This is informative and really fortunate.

• Open to view, open to modify, open to redistribute, closed for sale/commercial use.

  VMRS – viewable modifiable redistributable source

• As a programmer, I always saw “Open Source” as meaning “anyone can see the code,” nothing more than that. I wasn’t even aware of the OSI definition

• I own youtube, i mean youtube as my dog, I want people to remind it👶🏼

• I disagree with the DRM and anticheat thing because if you think about it, we already have cheaters. Massive cheater problem. So I'd much rather not have DRM hurting performance in games and anti cheats being stupid.

  Louis, if you told my mother she can only install Windows on her laptop, she'd say "oh, ok". Not because she doesn't care, but because she doesn't know. She does not know how to click an X to close out the image viewer on Bing, despite her being able to intubate you to save your life with her eyes closed. It's ironically funny.

  Also, why not just call it "FUTO License" if the license for "commercially allowed open source" doesn't currently exist? Just put the name of the company since you're the ones creating it?

  Telegram gained market because it was FREE no paid anything before and it worked super well, it had many features that WhatsApp didn't have and even the ones that both had, Telegram sometimes had it better. Same for stickers, etc.
  Nowadays, at least for us here, Telegram audio messages take ages to load/download amongst other problems and you have all the premium paid features.
  Also, in the beginning, people believed Telegram to be "Good and secure", more than "the evil WhatsApp owned by Facebook/Meta" but in reality it's not really.

• I really live what you all are doing at FUTO! Some of the greatest pieces of software to come along in a while! Grayjay and the keyboard work flawlessly. And from people I can trust! Been following Louis for years!

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