• FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    If they open source everything they legally can, then do they qualify as “open source” for legal purposes?

    No, definitely not! Open source is a binary attribute. If your product is partially open source, it’s not open source, only the parts you open sourced.

    So Llama is not open source, even if some parts are.

    • kava@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      I agree with you. What I’m saying is that perhaps the law can differentiate between “not open source” “partially open source” and “fully open source”

      right now it’s just the binary yes/no. which again determines whether or not millions of people would have access to something that could be useful to them

      i’m not saying change the definition of open source. i’m saying for legal purposes, in the EU, there should be some clarification in the law. if there is a financial benefit to having an open source product available then there should be something for having a partially open source product available

      especially a product that is as open source as it could possible legally be without violating copyright

      • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        Open source isn’t defined legally, only through the OSI. The benefit is only from a marketing perspective as far as I’m aware.

        Which is also why it’s important that “open source” doesn’t get mixed up with “partially open source”, otherwise companies will get the benefits of “open source” without doing the actual work.