There are ways to require payment for some uses of things that are legitimately open. As an example, consider the practice of selling exceptions to the GPL, as is done for Qt.
you are not understanding. why is it not open? Who is the authority of "open". Why is CockroachDB not open? I can see their source on GitHub.
"open" is not like 1+1=2. ultimately it is arbitrary. one definition of open is "to make available", by that definition all of them, including CockroachDB are "open".
open does not necessarily mean you can use it, just like how an open door does not necessarily mean you can enter the house.
"Open" is a pretty vague word which could mean all sorts of things.
"Open source" is defined by the Open Source definition according to the OSI [1]. In saying that, I realize that every couple of years somebody tries to claim that their understanding of the term "open source" should trump the one the community has settled on. I personally am not ready to acquiesce to this semantic drift, at least, not yet.
It's not even real semantic drift. It's basically the astroturfing version of it. The people trying to change the meaning are doing so because they want to capitalize on its good name without meeting the true definition.
