Back in the 1980s, when Richard Stallman was the only one talking about the need for "free software," no one quite knew what he was talking about. The term "open source" was supposed to remove that confusion, and was deliberately chosen to emphasize what the software is, rather than what it isn't.

I read a story earlier this week about a company named Aras switching from a traditional proprietary model to one involving "open source." But then the article indicated that Aras was releasing its software under a "shared source" license that was written by Microsoft. Now, to anyone in the world of open-source software, the term "shared source" is a red flag.

If Aras is distributing its software under a shared-source license, then we can't consider it to be open source, can we?

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