kaepora/cryptocat — Issue #23: Cryptocat is *not* "open source" (NonCommercial restriction)
Author: gasche
Created: 2012-03-04 09:50:50+00:00
State: open

Both the Cryptocat [website](https://crypto.cat/about/) and [source repository](https://github.com/kaepora/cryptocat) claim that Cryptocat is "open source", yet the source code clearly states that CryptoCat is distributed under the Creative Commons [By-NC-SA](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) license.

This license is *not* open source, because of the NonCommercial restriction. The open source and free software movements have repeatedly made clear that to be open source, software needs to be usable *with no restriction*, including for commercial purposes. This is extremely clearly stated by the [Open Source Definition](http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd) of the Open Source Consortium:

> 1. Free Redistribution
> The license shall not restrict any party **from selling** or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program **from being used in a business**, or from being used for genetic research.

This is not -- in itself -- a critic of the licence chosen by the Cryptocat project; any author is perfectly free to choose a distribution license that represent his desires for his creation. However, it is highly problematic to claim that a project is "open source" when it is not. The mentions of Cryptocat being open source on the website and in the source code should be removed -- or the license should be changed to comply with the open source definition.

If you choose to keep the current license and change the denomination, I would propose the term [shared source](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source); it express the fact that the source is available for people to read, without implying that it grants all of the "open source"-associated freedoms.

See also the Creative Commons FAQ entry on [Why you shouldn't use a Creative Commons license for software](http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F).

My personal opinion is that a NonCommercial clause can hurt a project in various ways, by making it much more complicated to distribute and, therefore, less distributed. Could a commercial Linux distribution include Cryptocat in its packaged software, for example? It will also exclude you from software distributions that only distribute free software, or that treat non-free software as second-class citizens -- for example Debian packages.
However, I insist that any choice you make is fine, as long as it is fully informed and corresponds to what *you* wish as the software author(s). Pick any license you like, but be clear about what it is and what it is not.