All Questions
81
questions
23
votes
11
answers
805
views
Alternative site name brainstorming
Since there are still many people unsatisfied with the current site name, I thought it would be good to have a centralised place for some brainstorming. If you have any ideas, please post them below! ...
- 7,526
11
votes
3
answers
100
views
Are technical questions about specific software that happens to be open source on-topic?
Let us say I have a question about an open source project that looks something like:
Hi! I am a newbie user of XYZ. So, while I was referring to XYZ's API doc, I couldn't understand what function ...
- 623
19
votes
6
answers
296
views
Free Software in the description, please?
See this post on area51.
To some people, there is an important distinction between Free Software and Open Source Software, at a philosophical level. I'm not really interested in having that fight ...
- 662
12
votes
1
answer
575
views
How do I ask for a license recommendation?
I want to ask a recommendation for a license to apply to my open project. How do I ask these sorts of questions?
18
votes
5
answers
181
views
Are NC & ND Creative Commons licenses on topic?
Creative Commons produce a family of related licenses. Most of these are Open licenses (not recommended for software) and are clearly on topic. A couple are not Open, but are very closely related to ...
- 249
8
votes
21
answers
394
views
More site name brainstorming - Part II
Today, we had a visit from Tim Post to discuss our potential name change. After a meeting at Stack Exchange and some discussion in a chatroom, we've nearly settled on our site name:
Free & Open......
ArtOfCodeMod
- 8,700
19
votes
28
answers
782
views
More site name brainstorming - Part III
In episode 1, we discussed changing the site name. A pretty much consensual answer proposed Free & Open.
In episode 2, it was revealed that there is no longer a consensus. The proposal for “Free &...
6
votes
1
answer
174
views
What's wrong with "External Resources" questions?
So one of the proposed custom close reasons is for external resources questions. It seems to be pretty widely agreed-upon that asking for external resources is a bad thing, and the close reason has ...
5
votes
4
answers
382
views
Make the site about Open Information!
Note: I understand this is very long, but be sure to read and understanding everything in this post.
Alright! Day 6 into the beta, and we're about to introduce a new addition to the scope!
The ...
- 6,229
13
votes
0
answers
186
views
OSI and Open Source SE
According to this Area 51 Discussion Post, the Open Source Initiative was contacted regarding the use of their logo. In the end, the OSI was interested in promoting this site, hoping to use it to ...
- 6,229
5
votes
4
answers
107
views
Do we want to allow specific questions?
Following this comment, do we want questions to be general, and helpful to as many people as possible, or do we want to also allow more specific questions that help smaller groups of people?
I'm ...
- 2,149
12
votes
4
answers
113
views
Off-topic reason restricts to software
The off-topic close reason suggests only software is on topic, which the community appears to disagree with, both on Area 51 and here on Meta.
off-topic: This question does not appear to be about ...
- 2,149
25
votes
2
answers
155
views
Is open source limited to software?
In open source, are we talking only about software, or also about other things? There is free documentation (GFDL, Creative Commons), open data (already has its own Stack Exchange site), open recipes....
- 383
15
votes
5
answers
209
views
How to encourage questions about anything but licenses?
I've gotta say That I was reasonably excited to see this proposal go into beta, but to date, it's been mostly nothing more than licensing questions. I was hoping for... something more.
What other ...
- 4,988
9
votes
4
answers
193
views
Where is [old arcane project] now maintained, maybe as a fork under another name?
Imagine a highly-specific open source library whose website has disappeared, or has been abandoned. Is it on-topic to ask whether the project still lives somewhere else, maybe as a fork under another ...
- 2,544
8
votes
2
answers
88
views
Tag [license] or [licensing]
I've noticed that we have two tags which essentially seem to mean the same thing: [license] and [licensing]. Which one should we keep? Or is there maybe a subtle distinction which might make it worth ...
- 11.2k
8
votes
2
answers
97
views
Should we just allow open source?
In the question Are NC Creative Commons licenses on topic? I argued that the NC-clause of Creative Commons (and ND for that matter) isn't conforming to Open Source (while CC-BY and CC-SA are). But in ...
- 10.8k
8
votes
3
answers
95
views
How to avoid political wars?
In chat it was brought up, that the site tends to become political. While I don't think that's the case I may overlook the things, so I ask how the community stands towards it. Also, how should we ...
- 10.8k
7
votes
2
answers
129
views
Create a help/on-topic page specific to this community
Being a good SE-citizen I looked at help/on-topic before asking my first question here, to find that this page is just about void of useful information.
A basic summary of what is and also is not on ...
- 233
6
votes
3
answers
140
views
How do we neutralize the site to be more accepting?
We've seen many issues so far on the issue of neutrality between things such as:
the Open Source Initiative;
the Free Software Foundation;
Creative Commons and more;
Don't get me wrong, the issue ...
- 6,229
17
votes
2
answers
89
views
Are historical questions on topic?
Should questions about the history of the open source idea or open source projects be on topic? The closest I've seen to one is How could using code released under CC0 infringe on the author's ...
- 1,555
16
votes
2
answers
140
views
How far into legal questions do we stray?
Questions like Can I change the caps to lowercase in licenses? and Do software patents for common formats (gif, mp3, h264) apply globally? are legal questions that impact open source software.
To ...
- 436
13
votes
4
answers
166
views
Are questions on hosting platforms on-topic?
I found this: How can I recover content from an open source project host that has shut down?
It seems to be asking about how to recover information from a hosting service that has fallen. It asks ...
- 6,229
10
votes
2
answers
101
views
Should questions pertaining to open knowledge be in scope
Recently, How can I trust Wikipedia, if everyone can change it? was asked. I feel questions like this pertaining to open knowledge should be in the scope of this site (even if it isn't necessarily now)...
- 8,986
10
votes
2
answers
66
views
Are questions about collaborative development on-topic
I haven't found our site's "mission statement" yet, so consider this another step in developing one.
Will we consider questions about collaborative development in general to be on-topic.
Although ...
- 6,695
9
votes
2
answers
97
views
free-software, fsf, free-software-definition and other associated tags
For both the FSF and OSI we have a few set of related tags:
free-software, fsf, free-software-definition
osi, open-source-definition
I created the two -definition tags, as I thought they were more ...
- 7,526
9
votes
8
answers
190
views
What should our site goals be?
After some small amount of discussion on this meta post and here in chat, I have a question for the community here.
What are our goals?
As a Stack Exchange site, we're here to answer on-topic ...
ArtOfCodeMod
- 8,700
8
votes
4
answers
189
views
Custom close reasons for this site?
We are currently running with a default set of reasons to VTC a question, or for flagging.
Should we also have some custom reasons? If so what might be suitable?
- 6,695
8
votes
1
answer
73
views
What should our reference policy be?
There are some things that are common sense. For example, it's pretty clear that if someone licenses a software program with a free license, then a person using the software has certain freedoms ...
- 1,555
8
votes
4
answers
96
views
Are getting started questions relevant here?
Now that we have this network, I'm sure there'll be newbies coming in asking questions like,
How do I get started with Mozilla/KDE/etc?
or
How do I start contributing to project xyz?
I guess ...
- 623
8
votes
3
answers
98
views
Are questions on getting your project "blessed" on scope?
This question was closed
How do I make sure my installer doesn't set off virus scanners?
as a dupe of
How to give evidence that an open-source project is reputable?
Personally, I think ...
- 6,695
7
votes
5
answers
113
views
Should we copy questions from the GNU GPL FAQ
I noticed the question How to license program output? which is a verbatim copy of an entry of the GNU GPL FAQ. Naturally, the current top answer also quotes said entry of the FAQ.
Should we get ...
- 11.2k
7
votes
5
answers
125
views
What should our site-description be?
We have mods now, that can change a lot of things, among them the site-description in the tour.
It currently reads:
Open Source Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for
people organizing,...
- 10.8k
6
votes
2
answers
96
views
Are FAQs on-topic?
This question is asking a question that can easily be answered by reading the resources from the well known resources (FSF and OSI).
I think such a question is a FAQ regarding Free Software and Open ...
user114
5
votes
2
answers
149
views
What are our main risks of not getting to public beta?
Although it seems like we have only just started, in private beta years we've been doing this a long time. How are we doing? Is there anything that we should be doing but are not yet? Are we doing ...
- 2,149
5
votes
0
answers
42
views
2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in ...
- 101
5
votes
0
answers
55
views
2019: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, ...
- 101
4
votes
3
answers
75
views
Are questions about the licences of popular open source projects on-topic here?
I have a question I want to ask about the license of Ruby (MRI), and what portions of the project it covers (specifically, I'm wondering whether or not it covers bundled gems which are distributed in ...
- 103
3
votes
4
answers
80
views
Should questions regarding licenses and usage of OSS from other sites be migrated here
I was looking for an answer to a concern of mine and occasionally found it in StackOverflow and it is closed as off-topic which it is there, but I think that the question is pretty on topic in here. ...
2
votes
0
answers
57
views
Are tag posts really "deleted"?
I've started writing tag wiki's, but I'm getting this:
That's the only thing on the page. The link is fine: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/edit-tag-wiki/70
I haven't had any problem editing ...
- 6,229
13
votes
17
answers
912
views
Community Promotion Ads [duplicate]
We recently entered public beta, so we need to get word out to the rest of Stack Exchange about Open Source Stack Exchange. One of the best ways of doing this is with Community Promotion Ads.
Here is ...
- 1,555
12
votes
1
answer
220
views
What, exactly, are moderators doing to review reviewers?
In a recent meta post, which has since changed dramatically so many comments are no longer on topic there, a moderator said a few things that I feel need to be discussed.
The following quotes are ...
- 708
6
votes
0
answers
335
views
What are the criteria for which a name will be considered acceptable?
Tim Post (Director of Stack Overflow Communities) has visited this site before to help us with the issue of choosing a site name. He and the other staff had ruled out the 'Free & Open' name, but I ...
- 7,526
4
votes
2
answers
76
views
Would major FLOSS announcements be on topic?
To scope this question, I stress the word major in the title.
If we want this site to be the first resort for people looking for general information about open/free projects and content creation, it ...
- 6,695
11
votes
3
answers
193
views
Moderator Pro Tem Announcement
Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community ...
- 101
11
votes
4
answers
189
views
Should we reach out to all organizations?
Earlier this evening, many members of the community participated in chat with a representative (for lack of a better word that comes to mind) from the Open Source Initiative.
Having been initially ...
- 6,229
11
votes
0
answers
446
views
Advertising Open Source - Community Ads for 2016
It's 2016, and the new 300px-wide sidebar has just rolled out network wide. When that's complete, graduated sites around the network will start to run new community ad cycles.
To be ready for them, ...
ArtOfCodeMod
- 8,700
11
votes
11
answers
301
views
What should we name our chatroom?
The default was Open Source, I, on a whim, changed it to The MIT License.
Let's let the community decide, how should we name our chatroom?
- 1,088
10
votes
1
answer
182
views
Beyond licensing
I feel that one of the main draws of Open Source Stack Exchange are discussions around licensing.
These are of course essential to free and open source software but they are not all of it.
How ...
- 13.8k
9
votes
6
answers
284
views
What urgent matters do we need to resolve?
What this post is for
Some issues we face as a community are more urgent than others. We can ask meta-questions about them, upvote those meta questions and the mods can feature some of those meta-...
- 2,070