Talk:Commercial open-source software

Attribution
Hi, re copyright tag, I created this new page with text from the GFDL lincesed wiki freeopensourcesoftware.org for which I'm the owner and primary maintainer. I will remove the tag. Reliablesources 21:57, 24 January 2009 (UTC) 21:57, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
 * An attribution tag has been added to the bottom of the article. Somno (talk) 03:09, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Undo Business Model changes
Hi, I think the 4 Feb updates were well intentioned, but muddied the water a bit. I undid them because they confused the software with the business model, which as Richard Stallman has been explaining since the beginning is the wrong view. Whether you sell FOSS in binary has nothing to do with the issue, the question is does the software license contain wording that allows the source to be available, modified, and redistributed without restricting your rights to do whatever you want with it in the future, including sell it yourself if you want. FOSS has been sold since it's creation. It remains FOSS. The organizations that use it may or may not be commercial.

Specifically, the 4 Feb update changed that COSS contains elements of FOSS, to COSS "can be sold as" FOSS, which is the opposite of the intent of the term and the article.

Also, the update added the term "commercial FOSS", which is a new term and the opposite direction from the intent to simplify, and mistakes the software as an object with how it might be used. Reliablesources 00:28, 14 February 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Reliablesources (talk • contribs)


 * Ok, so COSS is not a synonym of commersial FOSS and not at all free software! I think the issue must still be clarified. At least a clear definition is needed.


 * I do not know what this article is about, other than it's title, which suggests it is about commercial OSS software and then business models would indeed be relevant. I was surprised when the article was moved to the licenses category, but that seems to be in line with what the authors think about the article. I will wait and see. --LPfi (talk) 11:10, 15 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Seems to me that the licensing issue is important, but has a fair amount of religion to it. I believe that the legalities of OSS licensing have yet to be fully tested in court...so they can't be described as if they were final. I don't believe that licensing can be sensibly discussed separate from business models, and I'm not sure that the "licensing" category is the right place to put them. Davodavo (talk) 02:20, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The current denotation of this term is lacking a lot of specificity. It is weakly supported by independently-published materials by User:Dirk Riehle. I don't mean to denigrate Dirk's work, but I don't think the work has popularized this term to warrant a definition in an encyclopedia. The term's usage came out of a need to differentiate between two models in the free software community -- community open source and commercial open source. They're helpful as shorthand in Dirk's research, but I don't think they've caught on greatly in the free software community -- or elsewhere for that matter. The uses I've come across of this term are of differing connotation.

Finally, starting this article was as editorial speculative as creating an article on privative software as discussed at Talk:Proprietary software. At this point, all the article does is confuse various issues on software, licensing and business rather than explain. --Ashawley (talk) 21:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Probably should merge this with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_open_source_applications
Hi. I've been the main contributor to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_open_source_applications and I agree that this should be merged with that. Although the goals of the pages are a little bit different, they can be easily accommodated by dividing discussion into sections, along these lines: * licensing * business models * community management * list of commercialized projects (and vendors) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davodavo (talk • contribs) 14:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Requested move
Commercial open source software → Commercial open-source software — like Open-source software — Neustradamus ( ✉  ) 16:32, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Talk:List of free and open source software packages. Jafeluv (talk) 18:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Support. Unless it's a trade name (in which case the "s" in "source" should be capitalised), the normal English grammar rules should apply.  Wikipedia is not required to use bad grammar unless it is specifically intended. WP:HYPHEN notes that hyphens are used "to link related terms in compound adjectives and adverbs."  This is standard English usage on both sides of the pond (e.g., see Betty Schrampfer Azar. Understanding and Using English Grammar. 2nd ed. p. 203.)  The Open Source Initiative organization follows this usage when the term is used as an adjective as it is used in the titles here ("...all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.", "Therefore we forbid any open-source license from locking...")   —   AjaxSmack   17:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * That discussion was closed no concensus after 34 days Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:29, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Revamping the article
I think this article needs fixing. I also think there is a page needed for this, if only for historical reasons. I suggest we make this a jumping of point (either separate articles or at least subsections) on the various commercial business models around open source. The idea of commercial = closed/proprietary is only a small part of commercial open source. May need to keep the historic restrictions (SugarCRM invented this term) around. Thoughts? Dirk Riehle (talk) 18:47, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree, the whole idea of commercial open source = proprietary is naïve and unhistorical. Even if probably the expression "commercial open source" was first used by SugarCRM, a company known to use the so-called "open core" licensing (i.e. proprietary code on top of an open source core). David A. Wheeler wrote an excellent paper around this topic, entitled Free-Libre / Open Source Software (FLOSS) is Commercial Software that I'd recommend the author to read, it puts the whole commercial open source concept in perspective in a clear and exhaustive way. I would definitely revamp the article starting from there, leaving the open source business stuff for another article.Roberto Galoppini (talk) 07:50, 13 June 2011 (UTC)