Re: GWindows and a future home for it

[Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>]

Marius Amado Alves wrote:
> The SDC site contains articles and links to articles explaining all 
> this. The gist of Fair Source is: the source code is released openly and 
> publicly, but commercial use must cut a deal. We believe in this model 
> being more fair to authors than open source, and even being more true to 
> the open source spirit, than the existing open source licenses.

It is definitely not true to the free software spirit,
as espoused by the FSF. And the practical problems of
such "fair source" licenses will doom them. This is
exactly the same issue that doomed Microsoft's SenderID
proposal - the requirement that downstream users, no
matter how many generations removed, must locate and get
licensing for the full set of fair source pacakages that
are incorporated in the program. The weight of legal and
accounting requirements to track these is just as heavy
as for closed-source packages. Note in contrast how simple
the GPL is - you simply distribute under its terms. No one
must be located, no licensing must be negotiated.

Just because some programmer wants to make money does not
obligate anyone else to march to his drumbeat. If using
his software involves procedural and finacial annoyance,
then it's far simpler not to use it.