Really, what's with experienced HN users jumping to conclusions and writing comments without reading the entire post? The exact concern you raise in your comment is addressed at the bottom of the post!
There is another definition: what developers mean and understand when they say and hear "open source". It isn't hard to find OSS developers who've never heard of OSD, or DFSG, or _What is free software?_, or once they have, care much about them. "Open Source" is part of their identity. As far as they're concerned, it belongs to them.
There is also a difference between OSD conformance and OSI approval. That's been made very clear in the license-review thread for the License Zero Reciprocal Public License of late, and in many private conversations besides.
The License Zero Noncommercial Public License was never meant to be "Open Source" as defined by OSI. It may be "open source" as developers use that term today. If the latter, I'm not sure _I'm_ happy about that.
The reciprocal public license will be OSD-conformant. OSI may or may not approve it, on policy grounds. FSF may or may not opine that it's a Free Software license, or an ethical license. It may or may not be "open source" as developers use and understand that term today, or tomorrow.
All of these brands, labels, categories, and border disputes matter so, so much less than the real, underlying problems in lining up support and compensation with contribution in software. If by breaking or smudging these categories, L0 creates a clearer line of sight through to those problems, I think that's great!
> There is another definition: what developers mean and understand when they say and hear "open source".
Sure, but those devs know that 'MIT' and 'GPL' and 'BSD' are Open Source, and that being able to license the source code for eg, Windows, doesn't make Windows Open Source.
