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this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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Technology
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I appreciate the distinction, but open source is always a spectrum, so I think the description is a reasonable application here.
The source code is private, how can you call that open source?
Bose innovates again by creating "open source" without source, and while keeping everything closed!
But the source code isn't available. The source isn't open. It's not open-source, by definition.
The "spectrum" you refer to us about how free you are to publicly make use of the code, not whether or not you even have the code.
This situation does not fall inside that spectrum.
Is it? I’ve only ever heard “open source” to refer to the source code being released.
Maybe there’s a different term they meant to say other than “open source”
And being under a permissive license. Just making the source available is called source-available.
Permissive license means MIT or Apache2. The GPL or AGPL are also open source but copyleft licenses.
It most definitely is not.
It is a spectrum (MIT vs GPL vs APL for example) but this is outside that spectrum.
You're shitting out of your mouth, son.
One could make that argument, but not in this case. Documenting an API has nothing to do with the open source status of the product.