Talk:Source-available software

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Requested move 23 July 2018[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved. See good arguments for this proposal without any overt opposition. Been three weeks and two relistings, so it's time to close. Have a Great Day and Happy Publishing! (nac by page mover)  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  14:58, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Shared source → Source-available software – Source available appears to be the generic term, as cited by the Department of Defense. This makes "Source available" the most vendor-neutral article title (WP:NPOVTITLE), as most occurrences of the term shared source relate specifically to Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative. This article describes a generic term, not a Microsoft program. If needed, another article for the Microsoft program could be created, but it should be called "Microsoft Shared Source Initiative," not "Shared source." — Newslinger talk 21:55, 23 July 2018 (UTC)--Relisting. —usernamekiran(talk) 19:06, 4 August 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Dreamy Jazz talk | contribs 19:51, 12 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

— Newslinger talk 22:22, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The header in the February 2016 version of the article was much clearer, but it was mudled after subsequent edits: "Shared source" is an umbrella term covering some of Microsoft's legal mechanisms for software source code distribution. Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative, launched in May 2001. Hervegirod (talk) 11:51, 7 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Avoiding unreliable sources (like blogs), here are some instances of source-available and source available being used as a grammatical modifier in academic publications:
The search query was "source available" code on Google Scholar. — Newslinger talk 12:27, 7 August 2018 (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 or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

About the requested move discussion[edit]

I continue to think that changing the title was not a good idea. About the references from the discussion above:

  • In the first reference, the author uses the term but to explain it he references FSF and Stallman, so his subject is really Open Source,
  • the subject of the second one is explictly Open Source,
  • The Visual Proxy reference does not contain the term,
  • the reference about Nutch is also only about Open Source,
  • the last reference does not contain the term.

The reason why the term itself can be found is mainly IMO because it can appear in a sentence without having any specific meaning (this is the case for all the articles you mention which are in fact dealing about Open Source software). Mainly when people use the term, I think that they refer to Open Source. The article initial name was "Shared Source" because it dealt with the specific Microsoft effort and the name they gave to it. It is telling that the "Distinction from free software and open-source software" chapter has no reference to support it. To wrap it, I don't think that we will be able to find much examples except from Microsoft software. Hervegirod (talk) 01:36, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Two days ago, Redis relicensed some of their modules to be under the Commons Clause License, which is described as a "source-availability licensing scheme." Ironically, the word "source-availability" in the license's website links to this Wikipedia article.
From what I can see, source-available software is a superset of open-source software, and the Microsoft Shared Source Initiative is a vendor implementation of source-available software that is not open-source. Since all open-source software is also source-available, it wouldn't make sense for this article to focus on implementations that are both source-available and open-source, as "open-source" is a more specific description for those licenses.
I think the Microsoft Shared Source Initiative should get its own article, since it has received significant coverage from reliable sources, and the "Free and open-source licenses" section (Ms-PL and Ms-RL) of this article should be moved there. The restricted Microsoft licenses (Ms-LPL, Ms-LRL, and Ms-RSL) should also be detailed in the Microsoft Shared Source Initiative article, but the source-available software article should still retain summaries of these licenses since they are not open-source. — Newslinger talk 18:23, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Finished splitting the relevant information to the Shared Source Initiative article, and created Microsoft Shared Source Initiative as a redirect. I'll add information regarding the Commons Clause License later. — Newslinger talk 19:32, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Finished adding information on the Commons Clause. — Newslinger talk 22:56, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
​Shared source and Shared-source software now redirect to Shared Source Initiative. — Newslinger talk 19:50, 25 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"Source available" is more useful as a term of art mutually exclusive with free code/ open source[edit]

"Source available" is emerging as the catch-all term for a range of software licenses that exclude themselves from being free code (see the Free Software Definition) or open source (see the Open Source Definition), by either restricting commercial use of the software (eg https://medium.com/bettersharing/sharetribe-go-becomes-source-available-after-being-open-source-for-8-years-bb43c410da53/ ) or imposing other restrictions on people's ability to run, distribute, modify, and share (see: https://ethicalsource.dev/licenses/ ). Saying, as this page currently does, that free code/ open source is a subcategory of "source available" completely misses the point of both software freedom and open source practice (hint: it's inherently more than the source just being "available"), and limits the usefulness of the term as a way of describing this emerging form of licensing. I strongly suggest removing or heavily rewriting that section. Does anyone object? --Danylstrype (talk) 06:34, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Under what conditions is proprietary software "source available"?[edit]

Some scenarios which historically have occurred with proprietary software:

  1. If you pay for the software, you get the source code included with what you are paying for. (Historically, some software has even shipped as source only and compiling/assembling it was done by the customer.) You may be allowed to modify it, but you are not allowed to share that source with others. (Often but not always, you can share patches you've made with other licensees).
  2. If you pay for the software, you don't get the source code included by default, but if you ask for it, the vendor will supply it to you on request for no extra charge, under same conditions as (1). But the vendor will not supply it to anyone who is not a paid licensee
  3. The vendor will supply it to any paid licensee, for a nominal additional fee (e.g. you paid $100,000 for the software, and they'll charge you an extra $50 to send you the source code); otherwise same as above
  4. The vendor will supply it to any paid licensee, for a substantial additional fee (e.g. you paid $100,000 for the software, and they'll send you the source code for an extra $25,000 on top); otherwise same as above

I'm particularly thinking of enterprise software here – commercial UNIX systems, mainframe operating systems and applications, ERP suites, etc, etc – for which various variations of the above have applied. Anyway, do any or all of the above count as "source available"? In my mind, "yes", but reading the article, it wasn't clear. The article seems to be mainly talking about the rather different scenario in which "source code is made available for free to anybody who asks for it, but under a restricted license which doesn't let them modify it or redistribute it or use it commercially or so on"–so it isn't clear to me if it actually means to include these cases. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 20:42, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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