Sustainable Access Software

Turns out the US DoD has an opinion. 😏

Q: Is there a name for software whose source code is publicly available, but does not meet the definition of open source software?
At this time there is no widely-accepted term for software whose source code is available for review but does not meet the definition of open source software (due to restrictions on use, modification, or redistribution). Terms that people have used include “source available software”, “open-box software”, “visible-source software”, and “disclosed-source software”. (Such terms might include open source software, but could also include other software).

Keygen is an open, source-available software licensing and distribution API, built for developers, by developers.

Seeing this on https://keygen.sh/ from @ezekg ... "open, source-available" really toeing the line! 😅

Codecov++ is now _________ ____________

How I think of this is, what are we gonna use for our next headline?

functional source - everything a developer needs to use and learn from the software

From private Slack

i feel any name needs "source" as the 2nd word (needs to feel like an alternative to "open source"), ideally has just 2 words (more memorable, rolls off the tongue, etc), and somehow the first word needs to do a lot of heavy lifting in communicating how this is different ... functional source hits those pretty well

But "Free Software" ... second term "software"?

Any qualifier to "source" or "software" needs to also not be implying anything inaccurate or negative about the other Sources and Softwares out there, I think.

Hrm, I guess "Superior Source" is out then. 😏

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/
https://microsoft.fandom.com/wiki/Shared_source
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Initiative

Would MS want to participate in a "Shared Source" revival? 🤔

Also quite parallel: Fair Source License

https://boyter.org/2016/08/gpl-time-bomb-interesting-approach-foss-licensing/
https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2016/03/24/gitlab-look-at-the-fair-source-license/
https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/03/30/First-Read-of-the-Fair-Source-License
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10621933

Hearing some votes for Sustainable Source around the office.

I am reminded of Fair-code (different than Fair Source) by @ezekg in https://keygen.sh/blog/all-your-licensing-are-belong-to-you/. Keygen and Sentry both make the cut! 💃 It is actively maintained, as well; Codecov and Hashi are both listed.

the production and maintenance of commonly-held information goods

@mswilson Let's pick this up at softwarecommons/softwarecommons.com#4 (comment).

finding sustainable business models in open-source for initial vendors through increased friction to reuse
References

@MattiSG Let's pick these up at chadwhitacre/howtoshare.software#1 (comment) and softwarecommons/softwarecommons.com#4 (comment).

I think that's it? Closing again. 🙈

Thank you all for your participation! Epic thread! 😅 🙏 💃

Hey all, circling back to this old thread to share that we launched Fair Source today.

Revisiting @dcramer's original statement:

The intent here is to normalize a category of software which provides more freedom than closed source, and more freedom than typical source-available software. It should not diminish the value of FOSS (or OSI's definition of "Open Source"), but should also not be overly confusing to end-users, and not include prejudice.

I'd say we've done a pretty good job of meeting that. Judge for yourself on fair.io.

Cheers! 🍻

@chadwhitacre Congrats, The site looks great! Beautiful, well-organised and easy to read. I like that you defined some level of definition to back the term.

The only part that raised en eyebrow when reading was the text under the "How does Fair Source relate to Open Source?" FAQ item. The text here feels somewhat opinion based from a certain viewpoint than keeping to the functionality of fair source/open source.

Fair Source provides as many of the benefits of Open Source to developers as companies are comfortable giving, while reserving and asserting a minimal set of exclusive rights to help achieve a sustainable business model.

Emphasis mine. Not sure why this is specific "to developers" since everyone (including end-users, companies) would gain from those shared benefits. The "companies are comfortable giving" really depends on the company and their viewpoint/goals. I feel the line would work better without this. Also, linking "Open Source" in that to https://opensource.org/osd may be better as to provide the context of what open source is, rather than what the OSI is.

Then in regard to the two boxes beneath this:

Fair Source works best for a company’s core software products.
Open Source is best for infrastructure shared across companies.

That's quite an opinionated take which again depends on perspective, goals, scenario & ideals.

As an extra note, the last FAQ item makes it sound like you're assuring that all fair source code will be safe (in terms of security) to use. I get what you're going for though but haven't been able to think of a better succinct title myself.

Thanks for the feedback and kind words, @ssddanbrown! Sorry it's taken a while to circle back. I've addressed your points in fairsource/fair.io#54. 👍