
Open source software took over the world – TechCrunch - axiomdata316
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/12/how-open-source-software-took-over-the-world/
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kemitchell
Interesting reappropriation of “viral” to say that open source markets itself,
rather than that open source forces other work to be open source, too. It’s
“viral” as in “viral marketing”.

The author repeatedly expresses that there is one open source business model,
“ _the_ open source business model”, at a given time. It’s not that they
really believe there is only one model. They acknowledge and describe changes
and variations. But from their point of view, one model seems to monopolize
mindhare at any given time, and successive generations of companies refine it,
in reaction to how the prior generation fared.

In skeptical terms, it’s a herd mentality. In positive terms, it’s a
codeveloping state of the business art.

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metildaa
Open Source is a term that is a fair bit younger than Free Software/Libre
software. It was created so those who didn't like GPLed and similarly licensed
software could easily talk about lightly licensed software (eg: BSD).

Most of the people I run into in Seattle that are all psyched about Open
Source are of the lawyer for BigCo type, or are personal zealots who have been
diving down the rabbit hole and buy the ideology of "true freedom". Problem
is, you don't create much of a virtuous cycle of improvement when there is no
incentive to contribute back to upstream, or even post your fork online.

~~~
kemitchell
> [Open Source] was created so those who didn't like GPLed and similarly
> licensed software could easily talk about lightly licensed software (eg:
> BSD).

I'm afraid that's incorrect.

The moniker "open source" was coined in working group leading up to the
formation of the Open Source Initiative, as a rebranding of Free Software to
industry, around the time of Netscape's software release. OSI published an
"Open Source Definition" based directly on Debian's Free Software Guidelines,
which explicitly set out to describe _both_ permissive terms like BSD _and_
copyleft terms like GPLv2. The OSD doesn't have an "Example Licenses" section,
but DFSG still does:

[https://writing.kemitchell.com/2017/11/12/DFSG-versus-
OSD.ht...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2017/11/12/DFSG-versus-OSD.html)

Folks do commonly distinguish BSD- and GPL-style licenses, as you imply. The
most popular lingo says "permissive" contra "copyleft". Lawrence Rosen's book
popularized "academic" versus "reciprocal". We could also say "BSD school" and
"FSF school".

