No, software being free as in beer is not a necessary condition for being open-source. And if the code is not free as in beer, the pricing model can be whatever the hell you want, as long as the code is shared when the user is licensed. That can mean an expensive license for enterprise use coexisting with a free license for (say) researchers and individual devs.
No, not in the way GP wrote. You’re not allowed to have your license discriminate between users, so you’d have to sell your software to everyone, not just big companies.
Open source software can be sold at different prices to different customers, and still remain open source. Open source software can also be sold only to certain types of customers, and still remain open source. Who the developer decides to sell or distribute the software to, and at what price, is unrelated to how the software is licensed.
However, because the Open Source Definition prohibits open source software licenses from discriminating against “any person or group of persons”, the customers who buy open source software cannot be restricted from reselling or redistributing the software to any other individual or organization.
Right, which means that you practically cannot give open source software for free to non-corporations while selling it to corporations while still being fully open source, as the corporations can simply get it for free from any non-corporation.
And that’s literally what the article says lol I don’t know why you were downvoted.
Emily Omier, a well-regarded open-source start-up consultant, emphasized that open source is a binary standard set by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), not a spectrum. "Either you’re open source, or you are not.
The binary mentioned is different. Omier was saying either you share all the source code, or it’s not open-source. You don’t get to retain some proprietary blob for an essential component and still say the whole app is open-source. Pricing is an entirely different question.
If you have the OSI-approved license, you are open source. If you don’t, then you have some other kind of license.
What he’s saying is that there’s no partially open source license. You’re either using a OSI-approved license—to which you can say your software is open source—or you don’t. It doesn’t matter that your software has 90% of the terms of an open source license, but you restrict it in situation X (“corporations can’t use it without paying me”), in that case it simply isn’t open source, it’s another made up license.
No, because that would no longer be open in the open source sense.
It’s either open for everyone, or it isn’t open.
Edit: sorry to whoever doesn’t like it, but it’s literally how “open source” is defined
No, software being free as in beer is not a necessary condition for being open-source. And if the code is not free as in beer, the pricing model can be whatever the hell you want, as long as the code is shared when the user is licensed. That can mean an expensive license for enterprise use coexisting with a free license for (say) researchers and individual devs.
No, not in the way GP wrote. You’re not allowed to have your license discriminate between users, so you’d have to sell your software to everyone, not just big companies.
Either no one pays, or everyone pays.
Open source software can be sold at different prices to different customers, and still remain open source. Open source software can also be sold only to certain types of customers, and still remain open source. Who the developer decides to sell or distribute the software to, and at what price, is unrelated to how the software is licensed.
However, because the Open Source Definition prohibits open source software licenses from discriminating against “any person or group of persons”, the customers who buy open source software cannot be restricted from reselling or redistributing the software to any other individual or organization.
Right, which means that you practically cannot give open source software for free to non-corporations while selling it to corporations while still being fully open source, as the corporations can simply get it for free from any non-corporation.
Exactly!
I appreciate the clarification, thank you!
And that’s literally what the article says lol I don’t know why you were downvoted.
The binary mentioned is different. Omier was saying either you share all the source code, or it’s not open-source. You don’t get to retain some proprietary blob for an essential component and still say the whole app is open-source. Pricing is an entirely different question.
That’s not what his phrase meant.
What he’s saying is that there’s no partially open source license. You’re either using a OSI-approved license—to which you can say your software is open source—or you don’t. It doesn’t matter that your software has 90% of the terms of an open source license, but you restrict it in situation X (“corporations can’t use it without paying me”), in that case it simply isn’t open source, it’s another made up license.