This is just so hyperbolic? It's code for a project you can explore and learn from. License is not permissive? It's a friggin rails app - just look at the model or mechanism you are interested in copying, figure out the approach taken, and recreate that approach. Why is everyone in here with pitchforks?
Personally, I get pissed when companies misuse "open source" because without open source, I probably wouldn't be a developer in the first place. Just call things what they are, and leave existing terminology alone. Defending "open source" is defending the opportunity for others who were in the same situation as myself in the past.
Otherwise we'll quickly see more of what already started today, companies calling things "open source" in their marketing material but "proprietary" in their legal agreements, and no one will be better off if that's accepted.
In this case it seems like the person who submitted it to HN just used an incorrect title, so not that bad in the grand scheme of things.
My reply was more directed towards the "Why is everyone in here with pitchforks?" in a general sense, as it wouldn't have been the first time I read about someone not understanding why people who do "open source" would like the existing meaning to remain.
It's not hyperbolic. We're in a profession that elevates each other via open source. Saying something that is open source when it's not is no different than snake oil salesmen selling whiskey elixirs in the 1800s as cure alls.
Hard disagree. In the real world, the source of this app is open and therefore it is open source. You guys are behaving like extremists.
Would you prefer nothing at all? Sounds like in this case everyone here is looking past the golden egg in front of you - a successful rails app you can explore and play with - and focusing entirely on the wrong thing.
You're acting as if there aren't already tens of thousands of actual open source projects that exist just fine, some even make enough money to support continued development.
Why are you acting like the alternative is to burn down the system, you realize that there are plenty of people, organizations, and businesses that make actual open source software right? Like today even.
