A bit of nitpicking: the basic Open Source deal is not that you can do what you want with the product. It’s that the source code should be available. The whole point of introducing open source as an idea was to allow coorporations etc. to give access to their source code without worrying so much about people doing what you’re describing. Deleting a “don’t do this bad thing” can be prosecuted as copyright infringement (if the whole license gets removed). This is what copyleft was invented for—to subvert copyright laws by using them to force companies to publish their code.
There are licenses like MIT which do what you’re describing. Others are less permissive, and e.g. only allow you to use the code in non-commercial projects, or stipulate that you have to send any fixes back to the original developer if you’re planning on distributing it. The GPL is a fun one, which requires any code that is derivative of it to also be open sourced.
Also, Open Source can very much be a source of liability, e.g. the SCO v. IBM case which was trying to get people to pay for linux (patent trolls being what they are) or Oracle vs Google, where Oracle (arguably also patent trolls) wanted Google to pay billions for use of the Java API (this ended up in the supreme court).
There are licenses that only allow you to use the code in non-commercial projects
But they are emphatically not considered open-source licenses by the Open Source Initiative and are not considered Free-Software licenses by the Free Software Foundation, positions that have persisted uninterrupted since the 1990s.
There’s a lot more to the Open Source Definition than, “well, you can read the source”. Most of the licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative have also been approved by the Free Software Foundation.
A bit of nitpicking: the basic Open Source deal is not that you can do what you want with the product. It’s that the source code should be available. The whole point of introducing open source as an idea was to allow coorporations etc. to give access to their source code without worrying so much about people doing what you’re describing. Deleting a “don’t do this bad thing” can be prosecuted as copyright infringement (if the whole license gets removed). This is what copyleft was invented for—to subvert copyright laws by using them to force companies to publish their code.
There are licenses like MIT which do what you’re describing. Others are less permissive, and e.g. only allow you to use the code in non-commercial projects, or stipulate that you have to send any fixes back to the original developer if you’re planning on distributing it. The GPL is a fun one, which requires any code that is derivative of it to also be open sourced.
Also, Open Source can very much be a source of liability, e.g. the SCO v. IBM case which was trying to get people to pay for linux (patent trolls being what they are) or Oracle vs Google, where Oracle (arguably also patent trolls) wanted Google to pay billions for use of the Java API (this ended up in the supreme court).
Since the inception of the term, “Open Source” has meant more than that. You’re describing “source-available software” instead.
But they are emphatically not considered open-source licenses by the Open Source Initiative and are not considered Free-Software licenses by the Free Software Foundation, positions that have persisted uninterrupted since the 1990s.
This is pretty much why many people thought that the term “Open Source” was a betrayal of the objectives of the Free Software movement,
“Free as in free speech, not free bewr” has implication that “well, you can read the source” lacks.
There’s a lot more to the Open Source Definition than, “well, you can read the source”. Most of the licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative have also been approved by the Free Software Foundation.