Talk:Open-source-software movement

Originality and credit

I have doubts about the fundamental claims of this article. The sharing principle is somewhat older than open source, or even free software. For example, peer review and the sharing of knowledge has been institutionalized in science since at least the ninteenth century, and I don't think even that is the earliest example of the institutionalization of sharing as an ethic.

How, then, is the open source movement qualified to take credit for opening up of course curricula, greater distribution of findings in science, etc.? These points, at least, must be discussed. --CYD

The free software movement was important in making a political statement in intellectual property freedom. Indeed, peer review and sharing of knowledge inside the scientific community is most definitely not based on freedom in the same sense that free software is, indeed, when scientists publish papers in peer-reviewed journals, they're usually required to sign away the exclusive rights to reproduction and archiving to those journals, who consequently make large amounts of money from selling subscriptions as well as access to their archives. --Joakim Ziegler

However, scientists have no restrictions on quoting, using, and building on the results published by other scientists. That is a very similar procedure; not identical, but the medium isn't identical.

I don't doubt that open source / free software ideas have had *some* impact; some of the examples in the article offered have been pretty good. However, I've yet to see a credible and convincing study of the broader impact of the "open source movement". After all, weblogs, the USENet, and various collaborative efforts on the Internet have existed long before 1998. If they had been invented later, I suppose they would be dubbed "open source" too. At this point, this is largely speculation, at least from my POV :-) --CYD

Article inaccuracy

Hmmm... this article seems pretty inaccurate. Did BSD licenses really first start in 1998? I think not. Perhaps the coverage of the OSF open source movement should be distinct from the coverage of the generic open source movement? At the moment this, and a fair bit of the other open source coverage, reads as a description of the OSF rather than the open source movement and open source in general. Any thoughts on how to correct this so that the full history and culture of open source is included, not just the recent, though very popular, OSF version of it? --Jamesday 04:59, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't see your point- the BSD claim is gone anyway; but the point of the '98 figure was that the open source movement began several many years after Stallman and the free software movement. --maru 16:12, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

About Linux Actually Linus Torvalds created Linux first and later changed licence to GPL. That helped some practical issuess. Before Linus used some self-made licenses. Info about that founds he book, named Just for Fun, named to be written by Linus himself.

--Ilari Halminen (talk) 17:19, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Introduction

I don't get why people keep re-adding this. Furthermore, it makes even less sense to keep in something totally inaccurate just for the sake of having an intro paragraph. The "it's better to have POV/completely inaccurate information than have none at all" mantra makes no sense. There's no evidence that this movement is an "offshoot" of the free software movement, especially considering it follows a different, contradicting philosophy. This philosophy is as old as dirt, BSD was open sourced in '89, a project which was completely independent of FSF/GNU anything.

It's not just "pragmatic concerns." And the usage of the word "propaganda" to describe open source movement's literature is extremely POV. There's also this misleading statement that keeps getting cited in these articles that the movement was just suddenly founded in 1998, as if the OSI represents the whole of the movement and its start. Even The Cathedral and the Bazaar predates that, along with major open source projects (e.g. BSDs). Nathan J. Yoder 00:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Is it a "movement"?

I'm skeptical that there is an open source "movement". There is a free software movement - it's a social movement to win the freedom for everyone to help themselves and each other. Open source, on the other hand, is a marketing campaign for the software. Richard Stallman often used the term "open source movement" in the past, and I always disagreed with him that such a thing existed. Now it seems that he is no longer convinced of its existence [1]. I don't see how "open source" is a Social movement. It is an initiative, but calling it that would be confusing since the Open Source Initiative name is taken. Is campaign an accurate term for what "open source" is? Gronky 15:24, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

After thinking more about this, the content of this page and the scope of this page are both contained between the articles open-source software, open source, Open Source Initiative, and free software movement - and the topic of this article doesn't exist as a topic itself. Which means this article should be merged into the mentioned 4 articles (which wouldn't be hard since it seems to only duplicate information on the mentioned 4 articles). Gronky 20:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Open Source Initiative describes open source as a "marketing program". I think I agree with their description, although "marketing campaign" seems to be a more appropriate description. What do people think about renaming this article to "Open-source marketing campaign" and merging the duplicate info into "open-source software" and have this article as being just about the marketing campaign that has been running from 1998 until now? Gronky 15:30, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

After still more thought, I think the best route would be to merge this into the Open Source Initiative article. Gronky 18:37, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Factual reference

Could you please provide links for those claims: "Microsoft's intense attacks on the GPL in 2001" and the "SCO lawsuit attacking the Linux kernel in 2003"? Thank you

Requested move 2009

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Open source movement → Open Source Movement — I think we should capitalize the M and S --Knight Samar (talk) 12:46, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose: not a proper noun - see WP:Naming conventions (capitalisation) for more detailed information. Knepflerle (talk) 14:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move

Open source movement → Open-source movement — like Open-source software — Neustradamus (✉) 16:35, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

• Support. Unless it's a trade name (in which case the "s" in "source" should be capitalised), the normal English grammar rules should apply. Wikipedia is not required to use bad grammar unless it is specifically intended. WP:HYPHEN notes that hyphens are used "to link related terms in compound adjectives and adverbs." This is standard English usage on both sides of the pond (e.g., see Betty Schrampfer Azar. Understanding and Using English Grammar. 2nd ed. p. 203.) The Open Source Initiative organization follows this usage when the term is used as an adjective as it is used in the titles here ("...all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.", "Therefore we forbid any open-source license from locking...") — AjaxSmack 17:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Talk:List of free and open source software packages#Requested move. Jafeluv (talk) 16:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• That discussion was closed no concensus after 34 days Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:38, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of free and open source software packages which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 16:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• That discussion was closed no concensus after 3 days Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:38, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Examples of software that have come out of the Open Source Movement

I am not sure about the mention of "wikipedia" in this section. Surely "Mediawiki" should be listed here instead, as that is the software that is used to run wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.181.57.219 (talk) 18:14, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

section on ideologically related movements

I added a cn not because I doubt the statement but because it looks like an unattributed quote. I would actually like to see this section expanded, to combat the impression given elsewhere that open source is about MIT twenty years ago, but the citations do need work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elinruby (talk • contribs) 03:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

fact and pov dead link tags

POV -- I actually think that open software *does* promote the dissemination of knowledge, but this is a value statement that is not supported here. Prove it or delete it.

Fact -- the sentence makes it sound as though open source is a clone of proprietary software. The analogous software is usually quite different, actually -- functionality may be similar, but code is not the same. I suspect the statement cannot be supported given Linux vs Windows and GIMP vs Photoshop, so the statement should be rewritten to be true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elinruby (talk • contribs) 03:54, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

what's "a prohibitory of control"?

"General Public License (GPL) was one of the open source licenses that served as a prohibitory of control over software codes"

appears to be an English-language issue but needs to say what it means to say then back it up. Elinruby (talk) 04:12, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

citations needed in history section

over-reliance on an interested party and a single outdated link (2000, paleontology by internet standards) insufficient as back-up for claim taking credit for open source.

discussion of pros and cons of different licenses should link to a more technical discussion.

correction -- *two* outdated links, one an interview with Eric Raymond, plus a page written by Eric Raymond.Elinruby (talk) 04:30, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

A thought about punctuation.

Conventional usage in English is to hyphenate compound adjectives. Thus, the use of "open source" as an adjective rightly ought to be "open-source", as in "open-source code" or "the open-source movement". I did not, however, want to just burn through the whole article making that change if there is any substantial resistance to it. (Why there might be is unguessable to me, but this is Wikipedia.) 63.174.56.82 (talk) 03:55, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, I see now that this issue has been raised before (the section titles are not very indicative). I still feel it is a change that badly needs to be made. Any objections? (If so, for what reasons?) 63.174.56.82 (talk) 03:58, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Free software movement is missing in the lead

The Free software movement has a strong historical context with Open source movement. To should be mentioned in the lead. Belorn (talk) 16:59, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Ideologically related movements

The Free software movement is not mentioned in the Ideologically related movements section. It should be, given its close historical relation with the Open source movement, and its prominence as an ideologically related movement. Belorn (talk) 17:52, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Off topic intro on Adoption Section

Why is the entire first paragraph of the Adoption Section all about how libraries use and adopt open source? That is oddly specific for a more generalized (than that) section title.