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Aurornisyesterday at 8:13 PM2 repliesview on HN

> “Open source” can mean

Keyword being "can"

The Wikipedia page you linked to refers to "Open-source software development (OSSD)" which implies that it's a different concept than "open source" by itself


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Wowfunhappyyesterday at 10:52 PM

You and Bigstrat2003 are arguing a technicality, and you're technically correct, but in context I think that's somewhat beside the point. Skrebbel and Layer8 are focused on the cultural associations of "open source" development, and this mismatch is causing everyone to talk past each other.

The original post in this thread was:

> This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS, he just does code dumps and tacks on a license ("a gift"). That's of course great and awesome and super nice, but he's not been painstakingly and thanklessly maintaining some key linux component for the last 20 years or something like that. It's an entirely different thing; he made a thing, sold it, and then when he couldn't sell more of it, gave it away. That's nice! But it's not what most people who are deep into open source mean by the term.

Skrebbel probably shouldn't have said that Carmack "doesn't really do OSS", but what they clearly meant was, Carmack doesn't participate in the sort of community development as the Linux kernel or Apache or whatever.

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layer8yesterday at 8:14 PM

I’m saying that “open source” can mean both things. The parent was arguing that it only means the licensing. I’m not arguing that it always means the development model.

> The Wikipedia page you linked to refers to "Open-source software development (OSSD)" which implies that it's a different concept than "open source" by itself

By that logic, “open source licensing” would also imply a different concept than “open source” by itself.

Note that the Wikipedia page for “open-source software” [2] states: “Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration, meaning any capable user is able to participate online in development, making the number of possible contributors indefinite”. That would really only be the case in the context of open-source development.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

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