C.<p>Is that project open-source / free-software?</p><p>In practical effect, the answer to this question is not solely dependent on the project's license. It also depends on the project owner or leadership structure.</p><p>With community-based projects, this usually doesn't change the answer. But when you have a project with an open-source license which is controlled by a company, you need to ask an additional question:</p><p>If the community developers have a change that the project's users want, but which the company that owns the project feels are against its interests, does the change make it into the project or not? [1]</p><p>If the answer to this is "Yes, the change goes in, and the company deals with it", then the project is open-source.</p><p>If the answer is "No, the company won't include the contribution if it feels it threatens the company's interests", then the project is not open-source, regardless of what the license says. With an appropriate license, you could fork it, and turn it into a community-run project, and *that* would be open source, but the Google/Red Hat/IBM/Oracle/what-have-you original project is not.</p><p>Yes, inspired to post by <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/Google" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Google</span></a>'s tantrum about removing <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/XSLT" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>XSLT</span></a> from <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/Chrome" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Chrome</span></a> because the <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/libxslt" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>libxslt</span></a> maintainer publicly called them out on their <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/BS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>BS</span></a>.</p><p>[1] "If the company has a change the users don't want, does it go in?" too; just two ways of looking at it.</p><p><a href="https://mindly.social/tags/OpenSource" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>OpenSource</span></a> <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/FreeSoftware" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FreeSoftware</span></a> <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/community" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>community</span></a> <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/project" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>project</span></a> <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/company" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>company</span></a> <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/control" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>control</span></a> <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/BigTech" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>BigTech</span></a> <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/users" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>users</span></a> <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/developers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>developers</span></a> <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/contributors" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>contributors</span></a> <a href="https://mindly.social/tags/maintainer" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>maintainer</span></a></p>