The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision concluding it is false advertising to claim software is “Open Source” when it’s not licensed under an Open Source license. The plaintiff licenses its software as a combination of the Affero General Public License with an additional restriction known as the Commons Clause. The defendants forked the software, renamed it “Open Native Graph Database” (ONgDB), and started distributing their version as AGPLv3-only licensed. They advertised ONgDB as “free and open source,” “100% free and open,” and “100% open source.” The court held that it was improper for the defendants to remove the Commons Clause, and therefore the defendants’ claims in advertising that its ONgDB software was Open Source was false advertising. Read the court’s decision and an article by the Open Source Initiative.