The « open source » confusion

[AbcSxyZ]

Hello everyone,

I just discovered this open educational resource (OER) on « open source » following the Open Source Initiative reaction on the teaching open source mailing list (see osi-mail.txt), I thought it could be an opportunity to add some insight to fuel a questioning on the meaning of open source. Disclaimer, I am opposed to the Open Source "Definition", a reason that motivates this message.

The Open Source Definition dissensus

This is very wrong, especially since you capitalize Open Source Software. That's a term of art, universally recognized by industry and even by legislators around the world as "computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose" That's the Wikipedia wording, but you'll find many similarly worded definitions in US and EU guidelines and regulations.

While I agree in part that talking only about this possibility of reading alone is limited, universal recognition is very wrong, a lie from an organisation that does not acknowledge the dissensus around a potential definition of open source.

Not everyone agree on the meaning of open source based on the Open Source Definition, that's a fact, a dissensus coming from the very nature of linguistics and definitions. It takes shape mostly around license restriction.

The OSD/OSI (liberal) interpretation is contested at least from 2 sides, the economical and ethical side.

From the economical perspective, it's mostly from VC/big corp backed "open source" company/projects using these days Business Source Licence and Server Side Public License to protect themselves against (cloud provider) competition, not recognized by the OSI where "source available" wording can be imposed but where open source may be still used with a conscious rejection of OSI/OSD.

See for example work done by @ssddanbrown Open Source Confusion Cases (+ article "Redefining Open Source via "Commercial Open Source")

There are two approaches to open source: orthodox and commercial. As a VC, we stick to the latter and consider e.g. Elastic and MongoDB as COSS companies, despite SSPL is not approved by the OSI.

From the ethical side, the liberal interpretation with the increasing visibility of issues generated by openness lead to a split of the community with the creation of the Organization for Ethical Source, where the OSD dominant community behaviour is not innocent in this demerger.

Ultimately, we are the heart and soul of FLOSS, not the Free Software Foundation or the Open Source Initiative or GitHub.
Coraline Ada Ehmke, Organization for Ethical source co-founder

Saying that everyone agrees on the meaning of open source would be pure propaganda. It's in part because you can use open source as you want for the better or the worst, even with capital letter, « Open Source » is nobody property.

Beware of the word police which imposes its vision.

Open Source Beyond software

I jump on the ambiguity as the textbook is titled « Open Source » and not « Open Source Software », but there are important questions regarding open source beyond software. A concept that can make sense for any kind of digital resources where there are challenges around the availability of their "sources".

Let's take for example your own textbook, which is open education/OER. It could have been only the website, freely available for reading ("open access"). But you also provide the sources of the textbook on github (in a source folder !) to enable its modification, evolution, reappropriation and so on.

For open education, the notion of « open source educational resource » was suggested to highlight this source availability, which are often missing: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.14330

Open source derivate originally from "source code", but it seems to make sense regarding the source of digital resource more broadly.

Rather than open source software, it could be about open source resources, with « open source » being the practice of releasing publicly digital resources with their sources, whether it's software, educational content, research article, hardware design and so on, in open education, open science, open hardware... It's common to have open source professionals who acknowledge that open source is not limited to software.

This book on open source would then not explain itself, the open source practice used for its creation. Potential implications could vary between renaming the book to changing its topic, open source is probably not open source !

I'm reacting as I'm facing open source confusion and working on the meaning of open source, if it can provide food for thought on the topic. I'm slowly working on a knowledge base on open source (open-source-undefined.org) to gather information around this notion, an approach between research and education.

To better understand this dissensus and confusion about open source, there is a list of points of view on it: https://open-source-undefined.org/resources/open-source-reflections.html

I invite you to take a critical look at what the OSI or I have to say, to consider open source confusion to have a better understanding of the concept.

What if we still don't know what « open source » is ?

[pearcej]

The discussion is certainly rich with the good discourse of those interested and willing to engage!

[pearcej]

I also think it might be useful for students if we distill the discussion and actually include it in the text with references to these debates.

Students especially need to be actively engaged in their own learning, but it is too easy to be passive, especially in the age of AI.

[AbcSxyZ]

The meaning of open source beyond software is something you already considered ? For the availability of sources for digital resources more broadly. It may be something increasingly essential in an explanation of « open source », important in the management of digital resources for IT people, but it's a paradigm shift clearly unconventional for now.

A paradigm shift which may help to explain the practice around the book, but which go out of software and may require to dive more into concepts such as open education and open science. « Open source » becomes then something else around open source resources.

Definitively biased, but I would definitively encourage and support you to bring this (these) debate(s) to students, it was somehow to share "state of the art" questioning regarding the meaning of open source in an attempt to involve people in the process !

[pearcej]

@AbcSxyZ I final;y have space in my life and am just returning to this issue. I am considering adding a section to the book on this topic. Students studying OSS deserve to understand these issues.

[AbcSxyZ]

Hello, happy to hear that ! Looks like it is happing at an interesting moment: Open-Models/Base#465

I continued to explore this question since then, and the actual progress is that I just sent these last days an intervention proposal for the event Open Science FAIR at CERN entitled « Open Source 2.0: From Open Source Software to Open Source Resources ».

A small step forward 😅

It would be to pursue this debate about the potential conceptual evolution of « open source » to not just encompass software but digital and open resources more broadly, at the intersection of these other openness movements and the management of different kinds of resources.

It would be a sort of restitution of citizen research somehow (I'm not in academia), to try to formalize and put some light on insights.

The validation is still pending, but there could be quite a lot to do if accepted, from both a research or educational perspective. Regarding what you said, there could be some interesting things to connect! And nourish open educational resources is a part of intents.

We also did some work around the meaning of open source with The Turing Way handbook/community, a guide on reproducible and open research. Some extensive but rich discussions which led to an update of their glossary: the-turing-way/the-turing-way#3653 (+ PR Glossary: the-turing-way/the-turing-way#3889)

This necessarily raised pending questions about how to explain these concepts. There could be good thinking (and competences) to mutualize with some shared production.

Let me know what you may think, with pleasure to discuss around these things. What kind of activities could you carry out with your students, what type of pedagogical activities/practices do you want to have around this particular book?

[AbcSxyZ]

In case you're short on readings: https://www.zotero.org/groups/5352918/open_source_undefined/library

[pearcej]

I am starting to chip away at this issue. Please see #348 and comment.