Well yes, but also no. You can’t reproduce a book because that violates copyrights.
Open source in this context just means that nobody owns the book, you can reproduce it however many times you want, and distribute it where you want as long as you include the original license in the reproduction (MIT license).
Also, there’s a bit of a colloquial understanding that others are able to contribute or fork the original source material.
But “open source” doesn’t even mean that you can reproduce it or use it for free. It just means that you can see the source code. The permissiveness, as you mentioned, lies in the licensing.
So I still think that it’s a complete misnomer.
But “open source” doesn’t even mean that you can reproduce it or use it for free.
You’re thinking of source-available licenses. Open source has a clear and widely accepted definition that requires a certain level of freedom. You’re free to ignore this definition, but you can’t expect the rest of the world to do the same.
To be clear, open source allows for only providing access to paying customers, but those paying customers are then free to use and distribute their copies without any further payment. Then it wouldn’t be open source anymore.
Fair enough, I didn’t know that “open-source” is, in of itself, sort of a misnomer and, by the formal definition, a book can be open-source, because the phrase means certain specific things not tied to source code, contrary to what the name implies.
And in my defense, I’ve seen some software that required license key to use, with code available on GitHub or something that called itself open-source (I won’t be able to recall the specific names). I assume the term is misused often.
No worries, nothing wrong with not knowing everything about every random subject. I would like to apologize for being overly harsh, I assumed that people in c/opensource would have general knowledge of this definition, but that assumption was clearly bad. So again, sorry.
I assume the term is misused often.
Yes, companies sometimes do that. Open source is marketable as a guarantee that you won’t fully lose access to a piece of software, and there aren’t any real consequences of misusing it. But there’s also a scheme called dual licensing where the software is available under two licenses - one license is open source but annoying for commercial use, and the other is a “normal” proprietary license under which businesses can buy the code. This is fine (as long as the provider has copyright to all the code being dual licensed) and is pretty common and makes the software open source.
@abfarid Can you quote any authoritative source that says that? Open-source most certainly means more than just being able to read the code. Sure, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta would love it if they could use the open-source term for marketing without providing any of the freedoms, but luckily it doesn’t depend on them.
I mean, it’s called “LaTeX by example”, so there’s a pretty good chance it’s written in LaTeX, which you do indeed compile to get the PDF or whatever output you want.
Also, just having access to the source doesn’t make it open source - that requires more freedoms. For example, here’s GitLab Enterprise Edition source code, fully functional and ready to be used. And also officially described as the proprietary edition of GitLab by the GitLab company itself. Why? Because its license pretty much boils down to “you can use this only for testing and development, unless you have paid for it”.
Sort of, if you’re writing a research paper or presentation or something like that with a lot of math in it, you can use Latex (for the whole thing, not just the formulas). It’s 10000X better than writing the same stuff in Word, especially if you know how to code
What’s an “open source” book? You don’t compile a book, aren’t they all “open source”? Do they list all the sources for their text or something?
Well yes, but also no. You can’t reproduce a book because that violates copyrights.
Open source in this context just means that nobody owns the book, you can reproduce it however many times you want, and distribute it where you want as long as you include the original license in the reproduction (MIT license).
Also, there’s a bit of a colloquial understanding that others are able to contribute or fork the original source material.
But “open source” doesn’t even mean that you can reproduce it or use it for free. It just means that you can see the source code. The permissiveness, as you mentioned, lies in the licensing.
So I still think that it’s a complete misnomer.
You’re thinking of source-available licenses. Open source has a clear and widely accepted definition that requires a certain level of freedom. You’re free to ignore this definition, but you can’t expect the rest of the world to do the same.
To be clear, open source allows for only providing access to paying customers, but those paying customers are then free to use and distribute their copies without any further payment. Then it wouldn’t be open source anymore.
Fair enough, I didn’t know that “open-source” is, in of itself, sort of a misnomer and, by the formal definition, a book can be open-source, because the phrase means certain specific things not tied to source code, contrary to what the name implies.
And in my defense, I’ve seen some software that required license key to use, with code available on GitHub or something that called itself open-source (I won’t be able to recall the specific names). I assume the term is misused often.
No worries, nothing wrong with not knowing everything about every random subject. I would like to apologize for being overly harsh, I assumed that people in c/opensource would have general knowledge of this definition, but that assumption was clearly bad. So again, sorry.
Yes, companies sometimes do that. Open source is marketable as a guarantee that you won’t fully lose access to a piece of software, and there aren’t any real consequences of misusing it. But there’s also a scheme called dual licensing where the software is available under two licenses - one license is open source but annoying for commercial use, and the other is a “normal” proprietary license under which businesses can buy the code. This is fine (as long as the provider has copyright to all the code being dual licensed) and is pretty common and makes the software open source.
This post is on the “front page”, didn’t come here deliberately.
“Open source” and “source available” are different things. See e.g. https://opensource.org/osd and https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source-software
@abfarid Can you quote any authoritative source that says that? Open-source most certainly means more than just being able to read the code. Sure, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta would love it if they could use the open-source term for marketing without providing any of the freedoms, but luckily it doesn’t depend on them.
I mean, it’s called “LaTeX by example”, so there’s a pretty good chance it’s written in LaTeX, which you do indeed compile to get the PDF or whatever output you want.
Also, just having access to the source doesn’t make it open source - that requires more freedoms. For example, here’s GitLab Enterprise Edition source code, fully functional and ready to be used. And also officially described as the proprietary edition of GitLab by the GitLab company itself. Why? Because its license pretty much boils down to “you can use this only for testing and development, unless you have paid for it”.
The irony
I’m surprised this is still getting responses.
Fair jab, but I was obviously the computing term, implying “…from source code”.
Yeah, even in that sense… the irony
Ok I’ll stop being a prick 😂 if you haven’t used Latex before, you do write source code that gets compiled into PDF/PPT/whatever
I have some experience with Latex, but afaik, it’s mostly for writing mathematical formulas and stuff, no?
Sort of, if you’re writing a research paper or presentation or something like that with a lot of math in it, you can use Latex (for the whole thing, not just the formulas). It’s 10000X better than writing the same stuff in Word, especially if you know how to code