Not the same team. Open source isn't really about the license, and it's also not even really about the source; open source is a philosophy centering open development and collaboration. Sharing the source is necessary, but not sufficient. Too often, "source available" means you get to see the source, but you are not invited to participate in development, and certainly you're not going to be participating in collaboration.
"Source available" projects want the benefits of being associated with that egalitarian philosophy because it's popular amongst technologists, who are their initial customers. But they don't want to actually practice the philosophy because their core interest is protecting their IP to turn a profit, not open collaboration and development. Outside contributions are considered a liability in many source available projects [1].
This is important because source available projects have in the past resulted in a "rug pull", when the project gets enough airspeed, so they start putting more work into the closed source to placate their investors. Once the technologists are not the primary users, the entire source available charade is done. The available source becomes deprecated, features are moved to the closed source branch, and eventually the available source rots.
One final point: if we call source available "open source", then what are we going to call open source to differentiate it from source available. Because they're actually different things.
Edit: (this is to the response below me, as I'm rate limited now and I'm going to bed so I'll forget to post this tomorrow)
If anyone tried to do this then the project would be forked immediately. An open source project can go closed source, but as an OSS project, everyone should already have everything the need to keep it going despite that, and that all remains open. That's why we love open source.
Also, it'd be really hard to pull off if they've accepted a lot of outside contributions -- when you submit code to an open source project, you retain the copyright. This is not a problem as long as the project is licensed under the agreement under which they submitted the commit, which only grants rights to redistribute under that license. At least that's how it works with Apache 2.0 (I believe, IANAL). So to go closed source, they'd need agreements from all of their contributors to do so.
Now, it can happen. MongoDB is an example. But as far as I can tell, you'd have a hard time of it if you accepted contributions from people and they.
> Open source isn't really about the license, and it's also not even really about the source; open source is a philosophy centering open development and collaboration.
Not really. A project under an open source license which doesn't accept contributions is still open source.
It is totally about the license and the source code availability.
There are interesting things to say about the various development models, and those common in the open source world, but the open source aspect and the development model aspect should not be mixed.
I'm not actually claiming that an open source license that doesn't accept contributions is not open source. See my post where I say it's not a bright line.
But claiming open source is totally about the source and the license completely erases the diverse and vibrant community that has formed around open source over the past 40 years. The license is simply putting the community ethos into a legal document. The source being open represents a meeting place which focuses and collects the community. But the real power of open source is the human element that drives it, and the development philosophy they hold, not the source code.
Linux for instance wouldn't nearly be the powerhouse it is if it were merely "source available". You're really misunderstanding the power of open source if you think it's all about the code, and not the development model.
The human aspects, the diverse and vibrant community that has formed around open source over the past 40 years are key, I just think that we should cleanly separate the concepts.
A piece of software is open source if and only if it's released under an open source license. It's necessary and sufficient. Also "source available" is necessary but not sufficient.
Then we can and should talk about how and why open source and free software appeared, and the other social aspects around open source and free software and how they are crucial.
I'm not stating that the whole thing is not important (clearly, it is),
it's just that keeping the concepts separate and clean helps communicating clearly.
My stance is already mostly not technical actually. I would push for free software and the human rights it embodies way more than open source despite open source and free software concerning mostly the same actual software. The tools (licenses) are mostly the same, but the intent and the approach can be very different.
Even the open source definition and the free software definitions are tools. They must remain clear and simple to be useful and powerful.
If you mix everything, we can talk about nothing.
There are many ways to develop open source software, including alone from a garage by throwing the source code out of the window without never looking outside. If you make the community aspect part of the open source definition, you break this.
Haven't open source projects done the rug pull too? Can't they relicense new code going forward?
I guess I would have thought of source available as existing under the open source umbrella. I get that there is an important distinction but from an adoption and evangelism standpoint it seems like an unnecessary crusade to push them away.
Do those projects have a strong track record of behaving badly? Do you think DHH has those types of intentions? (I don't know much about him really)
> Haven't open source projects done the rug pull too? Can't they relicense new code going forward?
They can, if the original license is permissive, or if there was a CLA. They can't for significant contributions under a copyleft license that was not done under a CLA. Something to consider when contributing to a project that uses a CLA or a permissive license.
> I get that there is an important distinction but from an adoption and evangelism standpoint it seems like an unnecessary crusade to push them away.
Depends on your goals. If source available misses the point anyway, adoption doesn't help, the message risks being blurred, and therefore you should push back.
"Source available" projects want the benefits of being associated with that egalitarian philosophy because it's popular amongst technologists, who are their initial customers. But they don't want to actually practice the philosophy because their core interest is protecting their IP to turn a profit, not open collaboration and development. Outside contributions are considered a liability in many source available projects [1].
This is important because source available projects have in the past resulted in a "rug pull", when the project gets enough airspeed, so they start putting more work into the closed source to placate their investors. Once the technologists are not the primary users, the entire source available charade is done. The available source becomes deprecated, features are moved to the closed source branch, and eventually the available source rots.
One final point: if we call source available "open source", then what are we going to call open source to differentiate it from source available. Because they're actually different things.
[1]: For example, many projects won't even allow outside contributions, but when they do, you'll have to sign some sort of contributor agreement: https://www.scylladb.com/open-source-nosql-database/contribu...
Edit: (this is to the response below me, as I'm rate limited now and I'm going to bed so I'll forget to post this tomorrow)
If anyone tried to do this then the project would be forked immediately. An open source project can go closed source, but as an OSS project, everyone should already have everything the need to keep it going despite that, and that all remains open. That's why we love open source.
Also, it'd be really hard to pull off if they've accepted a lot of outside contributions -- when you submit code to an open source project, you retain the copyright. This is not a problem as long as the project is licensed under the agreement under which they submitted the commit, which only grants rights to redistribute under that license. At least that's how it works with Apache 2.0 (I believe, IANAL). So to go closed source, they'd need agreements from all of their contributors to do so.
Now, it can happen. MongoDB is an example. But as far as I can tell, you'd have a hard time of it if you accepted contributions from people and they.