2025-06-19 Open Source Two Worlds thoughts
I recently read Open Source Two Worlds and noted this key observation:
I draw an increasingly sharp distinction between corporate use of open source software and people's cooperative use of it.
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Existing open source licenses, practices, and culture don't draw this distinction
It has something I have felt more of recently (particularly in 2025) even after using Open Source for quite a bit of time (I can measure my usage of Open Source in decades... ugh). And while linux has managed to "win the hearts and minds" in the cloud there has been a pervasive different vibe to that usage of linux (versus the old school variety).
When dealing with tech it is not unusual at all to come across new things and phenomena that lack a distinct name even if the thing or phenomena exists. Let's avoid the snake-oil vaporware angle which is another barrel of worms. CS tries to capture this issue with name of things.
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.
-- Phil Karlton
As cks tries to draw a distinction when one talks about Open Source these days. There appears to be two different types of Open Source but at present there is lack of a good distinct set of names to identify the types. My guess is that there will be lots of attempts to name it along with what I assume will also be the muddying of terminology to create different types/categories/usages/ecosystems of Open Source but at present I think it can boiled down to the following distinctions:
Open source code tended to by people
Open source code used by a company