Thanks for all the comments everyone. We're currently looking into getting these documents on git. Because Word Docs are not ideal for versioning, we'll probably convert them to markdown and use Pandoc to offer Word and RTF versions.
We'll probably also attach an explicit license as well. We've similarly described the Series AA and Safe as open sourced documents and honestly didn't really think too much about it after that. Mostly, it's to efficiently tell you that the documents are free to use and change as you see fit.
Obviously, we're not trying to trick anyone. Suing founders is not part of our business model.
I don't think anybody assumed you're out to trick people, however "open source" has a very clear definition [1] which implies that the work in question must be accompanied with a license respecting that definition, in order to modify the work and further distribute it. We as software developers have learned to search for and take note of permissive licenses and are very cautious of fake open source, like for example Microsoft's infamous "shared source" initiative.
My disappointment is when people are diluting this term, because it doesn't mean just free as in beer and it doesn't mean just having access to the source code. It's much more than that and the definition couldn't be clearer. Many companies have tried capitalizing on this term without delivering and this has left a sour taste amongst many of us. And YCombinator amongst all organizations should be aware of this, let alone the lawyer that drafted this document.
Comments
Thanks for all the comments everyone. We're currently looking into getting these documents on git. Because Word Docs are not ideal for versioning, we'll probably convert them to markdown and use Pandoc to offer Word and RTF versions.
We'll probably also attach an explicit license as well. We've similarly described the Series AA and Safe as open sourced documents and honestly didn't really think too much about it after that. Mostly, it's to efficiently tell you that the documents are free to use and change as you see fit.
Obviously, we're not trying to trick anyone. Suing founders is not part of our business model.
I don't think anybody assumed you're out to trick people, however "open source" has a very clear definition [1] which implies that the work in question must be accompanied with a license respecting that definition, in order to modify the work and further distribute it. We as software developers have learned to search for and take note of permissive licenses and are very cautious of fake open source, like for example Microsoft's infamous "shared source" initiative.
My disappointment is when people are diluting this term, because it doesn't mean just free as in beer and it doesn't mean just having access to the source code. It's much more than that and the definition couldn't be clearer. Many companies have tried capitalizing on this term without delivering and this has left a sour taste amongst many of us. And YCombinator amongst all organizations should be aware of this, let alone the lawyer that drafted this document.
But anyway, thanks for sharing.
[1] http://opensource.org/osd