Talk:The Open Source Definition

Debian Free Software Guidelines was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 12 June 2024 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into The Open Source Definition. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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Untitled

The bulk of this article consists of a copy of the open source definition available at http://opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.html

I do not see any copyright statement on the OSI website. Particularly, there is no notice that the OSD has been released to the public domain, or under the GNU FDL or a similar license.

The document in question is derived from a document of the Debian distribution available at http://www.us.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines . It contains the statement Other organizations may derive from and build on this document. Please give credit to the Debian project if you do. - Bruce Perens

The webpage at http://www.opensource.org/index.php contains this text, The contents of this website are licensed under the Open Software License 2.1 or Academic Free License 2.1 at the bottom of that page. - Bevo 16:39, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Item ten and grammar

License Must Be Technology-Neutral: no click-wrap licenses or other medium-specific ways of accepting the license must be required.

Should that say may rather than must? The diffrence is subtle and I am not sure if it actually is saying what it means or not. Anyone? Dalf | Talk 02:18, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NOFULLTEXT

probably should be taken into account here. It is not so much a copyright issue, but one of having enough to write. The text itself should be linked to (or put on Wikisource if you feel that strongly). This may sound harsh, but if removing the source text turns the article into a stub, the article probably needs to be deleted and have its text merged into another article. 118.90.121.17 (talk) 11:54, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Free software definition (FSF) vs Open source software definition(OSI)

Hi all,
According to the definition of Free software by FSF and Open source software by OSI, I realize that:

6th criteria of OSI meets freedom 0 of FSF
2nd and 3rd criteria of OSI meet freedom 1 and 3 of FSF
1st criteria of OSI meets freedom 2 of FSF

So, IMHO, every open source software is free software, too. However, FSF states "nearly all open source software is free", it means "exist open source software is not free".
Any idea? If such software actually exists, please give examples and explain what is wrong with my idea.
Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 183.81.47.9 (talk) 15:19, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. 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.

The result of the move request was: moved. It's already at The Open Source Definition. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:07, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Open-source definition → Open Source Definition –

Proper name of a specific policy document, not to be confused with Open source#Definition. See how it's used in Bruce Peren's article[1]. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:27, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Then could it be italicised in the title (as it is in the first external reference), so people aren't fooled into thinking it's just another wrongly upcased generic phrase?

Tony (talk)

12:20, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it can. Similar to The_Great_Gatsby. And maybe we could move it to The Open Source Definition. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:40, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would support the caps if italicised; that's ideal.

Tony (talk)

12:46, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, just saw your "The" above ... not sure about that. Don't we have a rule against starting a title with "The" unless it's very very unusual ("The Beatles")?

Tony (talk)

12:47, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No idea. In Category:Manifestos and subcategories I see examples of both: The Futurist Manifesto and The Communist Manifesto, so I am not sure that there is any hard rule. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:43, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support. This article pertains to a specific definition of open-source named the OSD, not a general definition of open-source; therefore, the title is a proper noun and must be capitalized. — Dgtsyb (talk) 22:26, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As long as it's italicised, the "The" can be dropped per TITLE and MOS, and we can flag to readers that the absence of the hyphen (breaking normal rules) has survived, because it's someone else's title. $Tony (talk)$ 03:39, 1 October 2011 (UTC) Clearly it is included in the original title. Still waiting on the italicisation bit.

Tony (talk)

04:13, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. 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.

So what IS the open source definition?

This article seems to say nothing about what the open source definition actually is (apart from the fact that it is "a document"). It tells me that it's different from certain other things, but that's not useful.

Mhkay (talk) 20:10, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered.

Please replace the content of the article above the categories with User:Buidhe paid/OSD. I rewrote and expanded the article based on independent sources. Buidhe paid (talk) 21:53, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done I did made a few minor changes (such as avoiding the term "notably" in the lead per MOS:NOTABLY). Best, House Blaster (talk · he/him) 18:19, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki99 summary

Summary of changes as a result of the Wiki99 project (before, after, diff):

Removed large section copying from the official definition, instead wrote a summary and explanation of the criteria based on secondary sources
Rewrote lead to fix the too-short tagged issue
Previously the article was mostly based on the OSI website. Now, the article cites a variety of scholarly sources
Rewrote reception section based on secondary sources, clarified that OSD is the most widely used open source definition
Added section on process for designating OSD-compatible licenses

Further steps:

With a bit of polishing this could be considered GA class

Buidhe paid (talk) 21:18, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@

27.109.113.119 (talk) 15:58, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Debian diverges" section

For context, I'm a Debian Developer and I was already involved in Debian in 2004/2005 when the infamous "editorial changes" took place.

I'm rather confused as to what that section is doing in this page. Debian *did not* diverge with regards to its definition of Free Software / Open Source. The change that happened after the mentioned General Resolution is that all the contents shipped by Debian, including firmware and documentation were required to follow the DFSG to be part of the "main" section of Debian. I propose to completely remove the section, as it seems totally irrelevant with regards to the Open Source Definition. Or, alternatively, summarize it as:

In 2004, the Debian project passed a General Resolution requiring all components of Debian to follow the DFSG, including documentation and firmware that, until that moment, had been considered exempt of those requirements due to them not being considered "software". This meant that certain components that had been part of Debian's main section had to be moved to the non-free section.

Again, this seems to me totally irrelevant with regards to the Open Source Definition. It's more an organizational question within Debian. It should definitely not be titled "Debian diverges", as there's no divergence in the definition, rather it's a question of in which cases we care about components following these guidelines or not. Margamanterola (talk) 14:59, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Following up on this, there's a bunch of other very specific Debian things (like the workflow of getting a license approved by debian-legal), that are completely irrelevant on this page.

I don't understand why they are here. I guess at some point there was a merge of a page about the DFSG and a page about the OSD, because they are so similar. But the end result is a collage of content that just doesn't make sense. Margamanterola (talk) 15:07, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]