Re: Licensing issues (Was: [Announce] Mneson : persistent untyped

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

Marius Amado Alves wrote:

> Actually the first important website was the FSF's. There's really no
> difference between free software as per the FSF and open source as per the
> OSI. When you ask the parties they say there's a "political" difference.
> What that means exactly I was unable to ascertain. Maybe the FSF was not
> willing to promote the OSD. Maybe OSI did not want to be a part of FSF from
> the start. So there's two separate institutions now.

The political difference is that FSF intends/wants to create a world 
where you can use only free software.  The OSI focuses on free/open 
alternatives to parts of the unfree software landscape.  Right now there 
is very little difference in practice between the two, but before the 
LGPL (library Gnu public license), there was often a contamination 
effect if you used Gnu tools to create your (commercial) software.  In 
theory this can still happen.  In practice, almost all free software 
tools now use the LGPL (or the GNAT/Ada equivalent that allows generic 
instantiation) on any files where this could be an issue.

So it is still the case that you can create FSF "free software" tools 
that cannot be used to create commercial software.  The OSI rules 
deprecate this possibility.  However, as was said, the two get along 
just fine in practice.  Very few people intentionally "take advantage" 
of this greater freedom (or more restrictive licensing, you choose the 
connotations) offered by the FSF policy.

-- 

                                           Robert I. Eachus

"The terrorist enemy holds no territory, defends no population, is 
unconstrained by rules of warfare, and respects no law of morality. Such 
an enemy cannot be deterred, contained, appeased or negotiated with. It 
can only be destroyed--and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the business 
at hand."  -- Dick Cheney