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Nat Torkington raised this week the very real question of whether the term "open source" is now completely meaningless, in the sense that its meaning has now been sucked out of it by companies that purport to be open source yet don't allow users to feely download, compile, and use the software in question. One example Torkington cites is SugarCRM, whose license he describes as "a questionably modified OSI-approved license.
First and foremost, I think it is pointless to call any company an Open Source company.
Software is Open Source, companies aren't.
More accurately, software is free or it isn't.
The distinction helps a lot.
IBM, for example, provides and supports free software in a very large way.
They are not an Open Source company, but they are a member in good standing of the free software community.
Or Trolltech with its' dual licensed and proprietary products?
Corner cases like SugarCRM become a little easier to deal with. The open source version of Sugar is not fully featured, and yet is still quite good enough for many people to use, and there is a pretty active development community. They also distinguish between their products -- the versions that include non Open software are not called Open Source.
Would I prefer all of it to be free? Of course. Is Sugar an Open Source company? Of course not. They are a company that offers an open source product that may be of interest, and proprietary products that do more.
This goes, in a way, back to the old free vs open question. In truth, almost all real Open Source software (I think there was one license with a clause that kept it from being free, so "all" is too strong a word) is also free software. Free software is well enough established that no marketing impetus exists to hide the ball any more. Call free software free and let the pretenders call their stuff whatever they want to.
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Software is Open Source, companies aren't. More accurately, software is free or it isn't.
The distinction helps a lot. IBM, for example, provides and supports free software in a very large way. They are not an Open Source company, but they are a member in good standing of the free software community.
Or Trolltech with its' dual licensed and proprietary products?
Corner cases like SugarCRM become a little easier to deal with. The open source version of Sugar is not fully featured, and yet is still quite good enough for many people to use, and there is a pretty active development community. They also distinguish between their products -- the versions that include non Open software are not called Open Source.
Would I prefer all of it to be free? Of course. Is Sugar an Open Source company? Of course not. They are a company that offers an open source product that may be of interest, and proprietary products that do more.
This goes, in a way, back to the old free vs open question. In truth, almost all real Open Source software (I think there was one license with a clause that kept it from being free, so "all" is too strong a word) is also free software. Free software is well enough established that no marketing impetus exists to hide the ball any more. Call free software free and let the pretenders call their stuff whatever they want to.