LWN.net – OSI: Court affirms it’s false advertising to claim software is Open Source when it’s not

The Open Source Initiative reports
on a ruling in the US Court of Appeals reaffirming the meaning of “open
source” in a software license.

The court only confirmed what we already know – that “open source” is a term of art for software that has been licensed under a specific type of license, and whether a license is an OSI-approved license is a critically important factor in user adoption of the software. Had the defendants’ desire to license its software as AGPLv3-only been permissible, its claims of “100% open source” wouldn’t have been false and there would have been no false advertising. But adding the non-free Commons Clause created a different license such that the software could not…

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