Originally shared by Drew Fustini (pdp7)
http://community.oscedays.org/t/why-are-non-commercial-licenses-not-open-source/569
Nomenclature debates like these are why I much prefer the Free Software Foundation’s version of the concept; where there is a clear difference between something that is “open” and something that is free (libre).
CC-NC licenses can certainly be called open in that context, but definitely not free.
I think Non commercial is opensource as in sense build a 3d printer and print a copy for yourself,
As for use of NC "what’s wrong with reaching out and speaking to the creator rather than just taking ’ there an email away for possibilities to open up for both parties.
In some ways keeps the designer involved in future development.
bug bear of mine is where a company claims opensource knowing full well the average DIYer cant follow, then end up showing plans without dimension. only parts fabricated and exclusively sold by them.The point is, when people hear “Open-Source”, they expect "made by the community because users are given fundamental freedoms " : Wikipedia, Firefox, Linux, Reprap, Arduino, etc. All of those would never have been succesful if they had been -NC.
When people hear “Open-Source” they don’t hear "Can look at the source code but can’t make any money off it "
So labelling -NC as Open-Source is false advertising.
see your reasoning Arthor but I cant stop thinking “All of those would never have been succesful if they had been -NC.” In the case of the prusa I3 and its variant bastard offsprings out there, NC may have been a better option and pushed the development forward for the next printer, rather than endless loops of variants.
dreamy jinx.
@Tom_Nardi Open-Source is about usefulness and Libre is about morality, but both provide essentially the same fundamental freedoms to their users.
« Free software is a political movement; open source is a development model. »
— Richard Stallman,
In the end, NC is not Libre, and is not Open-Source either.
@jinx_OI If you think -NC would have been a good thing for the Prusa, I think you don’t understand the license … there are litteraly hundreds of prusa derivatives, there would be many many less if it had been -NC. It probably wouldn’t even have been noticed by anyone if it had been -NC …
@Arthur_Wolf , there’s too many people that don’t understand that Open Source is a development model. Lots of people think OSS is something you do after you’re done developing. But that’s incorrect. Open source without contributors, strict source control, etc is just visible closed source. Open source has just as much to do with collaboration, as it has to do with the code being visible - and people need to be taught that I think.
@ThantiK That’s why when I saw this post I re-shared it to every circle I could find : people need to learn this stuff 
I tend to try and use the term ‘open innovation’ when people still want to share and contribute - and use open-source when it’s actually fully open for re-use and commercial application.
For some the NC is important, and that should not be considered a bad thing. After all, they could just keep it to themselves and not share anything at all.
When I see something as NC, I look at it and think how could I do something similar or achieve the same result and make it more open.
@Richard_Horne I agree using -NC is not bad in itself. I think using -NC and calling yourself “Open-Source” or “Open-Hardware” is dishonest though.
@Arthur_Wolf Agree, and we see many examples of companies doing this unfortunately.
Holding back the ‘source’ for X months ‘after commercial release’ is also another common trend. I’m not sure this helps anyone. And it’s an indication that the product or development was done ‘in isolation’ without the source or concept ever being available to the community or market that could have helped improve it before it’s declared as ‘finished’.
It’ll just take time to work out how these business models work, and how that impacts on individuals or communities longer-term.
Exciting times.
I think this is mostly just a lack of good naming/licensing options for people who want to release hacker-friendly products without giving up all their commercial rights. There needs to be a good, agreed name for that, which doesn’t carry a stigma like “closed” or “not open.” This is becoming a massive segment of companies and makers – they genuinely want to allow users to learn and tinker, but don’t want to create their own competition. That’s an extremely reasonable middle-ground to want to occupy between giving it all away so the design can evolve, and staying entirely closed. We should ABSOLUTELY be encouraging that behavior when people aren’t comfortable going full-open. I just don’t know what to call it that captures the intent.
There is a real, credible risk here that attacking people who use NC licenses (eg calling them dishonest) will drive them away from OS instead of shaming them into fewer restrictions. There has to be a better way to engage these people. I genuinely think the majority of them are trying to do good by releasing restricted sources.
If you ask a lay person what “open source” means, it would be a pretty reasonable answer to say “the source is placed in open view” (say for users to learn from) rather than the much-broader “this is given to the community with minimal restrictions so it will evolve” sense that the strict OS definitions require. I personally think the former is a more reasonable interpretation of the WORDS used, which makes anti-NC campaigners come across to the uninitiated as pedantic assholes. The OS movement has essentially placed a monopoly on the word “open” and declared that other normal senses of the word (eg open to view rather than open to use) are not valid. A great many people think the “open” in OS means open to view. That interpretation is growing rapidly, from all appearances. It’s a bit ironic that trademarks and strict definitions would be used this way to prevent the term’s meaning from evolving in the community…
(To be clear, I’m not trying to troll here, just presenting an alternate viewpoint that I think explains a lot of the apparent conflict. Disagreement is welcome. I personally never use NC licenses.)
@Ryan_Carlyle For me that’s open innovation and it should be encouraged - more companies that release what they can and share as much as possible will generate strong bonds with users and like minded developers. It’s a win-win and a good first step for any company thinking about sharing what they are doing (or planning).
I’m okay calling CC-BY-NC stuff “open source” instead of OSI’s “Open Source”. I disagree with their narrow definition, and I don’t think it matches the wider usage. This is “hackers” vs. “crackers”. I appreciate articles like this enumerating incompatibilities, though, which is helpful when selecting a license.
When I license my open source works under a restrictive license, whether NC or GPL or Affero GPL, it means “ask me if you want a different license.” It’s probably okay if you’re asking in good faith.
I’m sure there won’t be universal agreement on this, but when I talk to people, what is generally meant by Open-Source is "whatever made Linux, Firefox, Arduino, Reprap, Wikipedia so awesome ".
Which is a combination of giving the users freedoms that turn them into contributors, and actively being open to contribution.
Without these, those projects wouldn’t have existed.
When somebody calls what they do Open-Source, but they don’t give the users the fundamental freedoms, and they are not open to contributions, what they are essentially is using Open-Source as a buzzword, for advertising.
And I have seen many folks being actively upset at discovering something that calls itself “Open-Source” is actually -NC. This is not about being a purist. This is for example, about pledging to a Kickstarter that claims to be Open-Source, with the hope that will for example help the general Open-Source 3D printing movement/community, only to discover later that you are in fact pledging to a project that’ll never accept any contributions, and will likely never be forked in any meaningful way.
I’m sure this doesn’t matter to everybody, but I know it matters to many folks.
The “Open Source” (with logo etc) vs “open source” (lay usage) distinction would be accurate I think, but probably confuse more people.
@Arthur_Wolf This is certainly controversial, but my personal opinion is that SA/copyleft restricts usage and development too – consider all the companies that decline to use OS code and do white-room rewrites instead because of “GPL taint.” In my mind, NC and SA are both undesirable restrictions on openness, just to different degrees. I don’t see a fundamental difference between “you can only use this if you agree to my usage restrictions” and “you can only use this if you agree to my licensing restrictions.” If anything, SA is possibly MORE abusive because it creates a lasting obligation in perpetuity to take a positive action, rather than merely limiting what can be done with the source in the first place. In some ways, that’s even worse than patents, which for all their issues at least are irrevocably placed in the public domain upon expiration. GPL doesn’t expire. The license and attribution lineage just keeps getting perpetually more complex until someone throws out all the old legacy source and starts over.
But again, I’m sure I’m in the minority on this view.
@Ryan_Carlyle I’m not sure any of that is bad. At worst, if companies are put off by less-libre licenses, they’ll have to do the same work they’d have to do if the work was never available in the first place, just like 25 years ago. In the meantime, lots of others get to use, modify, and advance the work. I expect that if you’re distributing a derivative, it’s not much harder to take the positive action of distributing the source at the same time.
My POV is that GPL/SA licenses are great tools for encouraging continual improvement and contribution back to the public on a single work. It’s cheaper than doing your own reimplementation. In recent years I think their popularity has waned, maybe because the products of their original success are now mainly infrastructure. I think they’re less good if you want your work to be remixed with other works, though there may be useful variants for remixing/linking like LGPL.
The idea of a time-limited GPL/SA/NC license is interesting, drawing from the patent model. Though the IP holder could always fork and relicense.
I wonder how much someone’s opinion of SA-style licenses has to do what sort of contact they’ve had on a plot of author size (individual vs. corporation) vs. work size (pet project vs. popular tool). Like, if you know individual creators in poverty while the world uses their work (several recent stories), that might push you to SA. Or if you’re a business owner or work at a large company and you’re frustrated that you can’t use the best tool for the job because its license is incompatible with yours, that might push you away from SA.
@Tim_Visible I’m personally in the “if you’re going to give it away, REALLY give it away” camp, so I like the MIT and BSD licenses. LGPL is also reasonably fine.
Another GPL issue is that people who have encumbered IP rights (such as an employee agreement requiring IP assignments at the employer’s discretion) are expressly forbidden from utilizing the license, and thus cannot strictly make derivative works at all. Verboten. I suspect this technically excludes way more OS contributors than anyone realizes.