On: MAME is going completely open-source to be a 'learning tool for developers'

[mjg59]

No, the reason it wasn't open source wasn't that it had its own custom license, it was that that custom license didn't meet the Open Source Definition. The license didn't forbid distributing it with ROM images, it forbid any form of commercial distribution or use. That's clearly not open source.

[wodenokoto → mjg59]

I don't know who decides the term "open source", but looking at the wikipedia article, availability for commercial use, does not seem to be a core concept of the definition, but rather that source code is available and that people are allowed to modify it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

[detaro → wodenokoto]

http://opensource.org/

Their definition usually is accepted (and the MAME project refers to it in its roadmap when describing why they weren't open source before)

[mjg59 → wodenokoto]

The first sentence uses the phrase "Universal redistribution", and forbidding commercial redistribution isn't terribly universal.

[fsk → mjg59]

I thought there was such a restriction, I read the license and there isn't.

http://mamedev.org/legal.html

I thought "open source" just meant "you can read the source". Some people take a stricter definition.

I.e., if Microsoft chose to distribute the source code for Windows, but not allow people to sell binaries or modifications, that would be "open source".

[Nursie → fsk]

Shared Source was the way MS did this.

"Open Source" seems to be a mark granted to a license by the OSI - http://opensource.org/about

But I don't know if they have any legal control over the term as a trademark or anything, or if they just give their approval and grant the use of their logo.

Interestingly enough (for me anyway) the BSD style licenses don't seem.to meet their definition of "Open Source" but are approved anyway...

[mjg59 → Nursie]

> But I don't know if they have any legal control over the term as a trademark or anything, or if they just give their approval and grant the use of their logo.

The term's entirely uncontrolled.

> Interestingly enough (for me anyway) the BSD style licenses don't seem.to meet their definition of "Open Source" but are approved anyway...

Hm. In what way?

[Nursie → mjg59]

Well their "Open Source Definition" here - http://opensource.org/osd - seems pretty copyleft-ish to my reading, particularly clauses 2 and 7.

I'm not trying to say BSD licensed stuff isn't open source, or anything ideologically driven at all (god forbid I start another license flamewar). Just seems a minor inconsistency.

I may well just be reading it wrong.

[maxerickson → Nursie]

The notable feature of copyleft is that it applies to derivatives.

So for 7, some software that incorporated BSD licensed code under some additional terms might not meet the open source definition, but the BSD source project would.

Copyleft requires that a derivative project be available under the same terms as the original work (or so, I guess some licenses might be mixable or whatever).

[mjg59 → Nursie]

Ah, right. It's possible to release BSD-licensed works in such a way that they're not open source, yes. But if you do receive the source code, the license grants you all the freedoms you require to be able to satisfy the open source definition.

[mjg59 → fsk]

> I thought "open source" just meant "you can read the source"

It's occasionally used to mean that, but it's not the common definition.

[ekianjo → mjg59]

There is no common definition, unlike Free Software which is very clear on what it stands for.

[ekianjo → mjg59]

> it forbid any form of commercial distribution or use. That's clearly not open source.

I dont think you have a clear understanding of FOSS / Open Source. Having commercial restrictions does not make it less Open Source.