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Comment on Ask HN: Software licensing excluding military use?parent

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According to the OSI, the only authority on what constitutes open source

On what basis is there any authority? Just discriminate against a FoE, and call it OS anyway - are they going to sue?

are they going to sue?

No, but projects insisting on OS won't use it, and every online discussion about it will derail into a discussion about calling things "Open Source" that don't fit the OSI criteria and the pro and cons of creating your own licenses ;)

Since OP explicitly mentioned "open sourcing" it I think it's a fair concern to point out.

True, but that only matters to the degree you care about that vs Military use.

The power to sue isn't the only form of authority worth considering. Many projects and groups consider OSI authoritative in what constitutes open source, including Debian, Ubuntu, Mozilla, the Apache foundation, the Creative Commons non-profit, RedHat, Google (at least when they hosted Google Code), and others. Personally, I'm glad that the OSI occupies this role, otherwise, the term "open source" would inevitably be diluted to mean gratis or even worse.

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