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

[David Starner <dvdeug@email.ro>]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2004 14:08:22 +0100, Marius Amado Alves wrote:
> That's what I and others do. I don't want a new term. 

Of course not. You want the popular word with good connotations 
attached to you, whether or not you fit the definition. 

> In sum I believe we don't need a new term because
> commercial open source is simply open source i.e. requiring commercial use
> to cut a special deal is completely orthogonal to the open source main
> tenets. The only problem is that current licenses e.g. GPL are badly phrased
> and *unintendly* make selling open source *software* (not support or mugs)
> unpractical. 

Not at all. It was something done very intentionally. To make that claim
is like claiming that forcing you to define your variables in Ada instead
of letting them default to integers was unintended; it shows that you
don't understand the reasoning behind the whole system.

> Note selling open source software is a possibility stated in open source /
> free software commentary texts. 

Right, just like ACT does. There are many people who make a profit from
selling open source software under the GPL; just because you don't like
how they do it doesn't mean the licenses are "badly phrased" or poorly
designed, it merely means that you disagree with how they are designed.

Let's be honest; for all the talk about the words not being a trademark,
if ESR had not came up with open source as a synonym for free software,
would you honestly be using it here today? Are you actually using it in an
older meaning, or just using it because it sounds cool and will attract
people?