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Nice troll. qmail has no license. Thus, you are only restricted by copyright law. You are free to install and use the software. You are also free to distribute patches. How does this negatively affect your usage of the software?
True or false? -- It's illegal for me to modify the source code and redistribute the modified version.
True or false? -- Qmail complies with OSI's open source definition.

I have never understood the connection between "open source" and "free" (as in beer). What if all Microsoft products DID come with source code?

"Open source" is more than "comes with source". The term open source only applies to software that you can share with other people.

Take a look at the Open Source Definition for more information.

There would still be no reason for pirates to distribute the source code, then have each user compile it separately. No, they'd just distribute the binaries, just like how they already do.

It would also be legal for them to do so.

we're using somewhat different definitions of "open source" here. I [...] mean software for which the source code is available for inspection, not [...] rights to modify or redistribute[...]

That's a fine idea, it's just not "open source". The Open Source Initiative are the keepers of the actual definition of the term as it was originally coined by the founders of the OSI. They certify licenses on the basis of several criteria, of which access to source is only one. If you want to use another, looser defined term, feel free (pun intended), but let's not start re-defining a term which was coined specifically to avoid the ambiguity of previous terms (e.g. free software).

Sure, there are a few mass-market applications (office suites, database tools, networking tools and operating system stuff, basically) that nearly everyone uses, and a few more that are big enough to be worth putting in with them (things like basic art programs, programming tools, mathematical toolkits and other such generalised techie toys).

Wow! Talk about some sweeping categories (and I'll note that this article/thread is about a company whose software would fit smack-into the middle of one of them).

Yes, I see your general point. You're saying that software that is written for a narrow, industry-specific purpose is not going to have a huge ground-swell of developers and what's more companies will be reluctant to release their code.

You're right of course, and that's why you don't see tons of mutual fund weighting applications on Sourceforge, even though there are many that have been written.

I think you're grading on the wrong curve. You're looking at the areas that open source development is just starting to apply pressure, in industries where change is often glacial and comparing it to the software, networking and computer hardware industries which are still getting their feet, and are evolving at a frightening pace. Of course, you see the largest impact in these areas.

But that does not change the fact that open source development is about coming to terms with the fact that software on its own has no value. Branding and control have value. The ability to reduce costs has value. Software can help you achive these goals, so it can help you to realize value, but it has none of its own.

Large, non-high-tech companies are starting to figure this out, but in many cases it may be too late. How can a large, established company compete with its upstart competition if five of them are sharing the costs of developing internal software? It's a scary proposition for an established company, but if you build (or re-build) an industry around the idea that software is worthless, you can cut costs, improve quality and improve maintenance efficiency. It's going to hurt to compete against that....

you can go and download OpenOffice, Mozilla, Linux, etc. right now and ditch MS proprietary software altogether, and yet most people don't. You have to stop and ask why that is

I find myself asking how the rate of change could have been so high. MS and proprietary UNIX owned the server market 5 years ago and MS owned the desktop with only a small amount of pressure from Apple. Another 5 years and Sun will probably have to throw out proprietary software. Microsoft already sees the writing on that particular wall, but the desktop market has been their safe-haven.

In the last 3 years open source desktops have gone from hacker toys that scared anyone else who saw them to the slick desktop I'm using right now, and which I use for work as well. The open source desktop (in its various forms) is fairly new and the first volleys were pre-mature. The next wave of dekstop platforms will be from Red Hat, IBM, Sun, Dell and a few other giants in varying degrees of competition and/or cooperation. In anot

As I understand it this is actually a new trend.. other licenses such as the OSL (clause 10) [opensource.org] have similar clauses.

Attaching a licence file to a distribution is not very onerous, especially where the succinct BSD licence is concerned.

Also, common copyright law means you can't slap a GPL license on it because you felt like it.

Who says? I see nothing in the BSD licence that keeps you from doing what you want with the software, even if what you want is to impose a more restrictive GPL license on your distribution.

Incidentally, I've always appreciated the wording of the MIT license, as it makes explicit that you may do as you wish, including sub-licensing. In legal terms, however, it is no different than BSD on this point.

The freest code is Public Domain.

Perhaps true. But unlike MIT, BSD, and the like, Public Domain affords no real protection from losing your shirt in court because you wrote some software. And, like I said, the retention of Copyrights is not very onerous. (Remember, by asserting my Copyright, I am saying that, "I retain the right to copy my stuff." The license makes explicit that the recipient has that same right, so there's no real loss of freedom there.)

Attaching a licence file to a distribution is not very onerous, especially where the succinct BSD licence is concerned.

Also, common copyright law means you can't slap a GPL license on it because you felt like it.

Who says? I see nothing in the BSD licence that keeps you from doing what you want with the software, even if what you want is to impose a more restrictive GPL license on your distribution.

Incidentally, I've always appreciated the wording of the MIT license, as it makes explicit that you may do as you wish, including sub-licensing. In legal terms, however, it is no different than BSD on this point.

The freest code is Public Domain.

Perhaps true. But unlike MIT, BSD, and the like, Public Domain affords no real protection from losing your shirt in court because you wrote some software. And, like I said, the retention of Copyrights is not very onerous. (Remember, by asserting my Copyright, I am saying that, "I retain the right to copy my stuff." The license makes explicit that the recipient has that same right, so there's no real loss of freedom there.)

Attaching a licence file to a distribution is not very onerous, especially where the succinct BSD licence is concerned.

Also, common copyright law means you can't slap a GPL license on it because you felt like it.

Who says? I see nothing in the BSD licence that keeps you from doing what you want with the software, even if what you want is to impose a more restrictive GPL license on your distribution.

Incidentally, I've always appreciated the wording of the MIT license, as it makes explicit that you may do as you wish, including sub-licensing. In legal terms, however, it is no different than BSD on this point.

The freest code is Public Domain.

Perhaps true. But unlike MIT, BSD, and the like, Public Domain affords no real protection from losing your shirt in court because you wrote some software. And, like I said, the retention of Copyrights is not very onerous. (Remember, by asserting my Copyright, I am saying that, "I retain the right to copy my stuff." The license makes explicit that the recipient has that same right, so there's no real loss of freedom there.)

From ESR document: The truth is otherwise. SCO never had significant enterprise market share either before or after its purchase of the Unix source code from Novell. Examination of SCO's 10Ks reveals that, even were we to assume that every dime of their revenue came from the enterprise market, their 2002 share could not have exceeded 3.1% [4] This is at the level of statistical noise.

Your Honor, this is known as the SCO Uncertainty Principle (it as also known as Schroedinger's sales figures). SCO may have actually made sales of their Unix in the enterprise market, we aren't really sure. What we may have here is the sales equivalent of artifact. We'll give them 3.1% and call it generous.

--

Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemnded, but loved and bought with blood.

Good point from ESR's brief regarding this.

Perhaps these guys should should check their drinking water for hallucinogens.

They do care and care a lot. There are BSA hotlines where people can squeal on others (motly their former employers) and they do bring in the police to raid the compnay. It's in the news every once in a while. Brazil is mentioned in some Halloween Documents as a country 'troubling' Microsoft.

Reading Slashdot, I'm under the impression that Windows XP can't run 10 minutes without crashing, Macs explode if you plug in a 3 button mouse, the DMCA forbids backing up your data, John Ashcroft will put me in jail for watching foreign films and I just got first post.

In fact, the most recent Halloween Document describes Microsoft's frustration at the inability of their PR machine to keep pace with the volume of nonsensical claims of enormous Linux deployments coming from the Open Source media. They didn't mention sites by name, but I have a good idea which Taco-riffic site and its stories about "Norway Switches to Linux!" they had in mind.

What does licensing revenue have to do with open source?

Have you ever even looked at the definition of open source? The Free Distribution section is what leads to the lost licensing revenue. If our software was open source, we couldn't stop a customer from buying 10 licenses and running it on 10,000 computers. The Source Code section is what leads to lost maintenance revenue. If the customer has the source code, they are less likely to pay us to fix bugs or add features.

you said that you can't open source your application because you'd lose licensing revenue, which implies that you believe the two are mutually exclusive.

The fact that my company's revenue would be significantly reduced by open sourcing our software in no way suggests that open source and commercial software are mutually exclusive. I never said they were, so stop putting words in my mouth.

Red Hat, JBoss Group, Apple and IBM are all companies that make money off of open source one way or another. Their business models do not fit every business. Many businesses would not be able to stay profitable if they open sourced their software. The company I work for is one of them. If we made most of our money from hardware, consulting or some other services, sure we could open source our stuff and still turn a profit. But we make money by licensing our software to customers and even resellers. It just doesn't fit our business model.

I freely choose to make no money from my software work
"No they do not."

therefore everyone else must be denied the right to make money from software
I have never heard about Oracle being sued for including freesofware in their products?

Everyone has the right to make money from their work, in my understanding/opinion the GPL strongly hints anotherway of doing so. If others want to do it the traditional way, fair enough but others may opt for different techniques.

A last point : SCO is suing IBM, this does by no ways mean that IBM is guilty, at least until the trial is over.

Umm.. i'm looking at that license. What it looks like is that by releasing code under the IBM license, you agree to license all your applicable patents to all comers.

Whereas the GPL says "you are not allowed to release under this license unless you license all your applicable patents to all comers".

So under IBM, if you discover you have accidentally release software that contains a patent you hold, you now have accidentally licensed that patent to all comers eternally. Under GPL, if you accidentally release software that contains a patent you hold, you have either the option of eternally licensing that patent to all comers eternally, or ceasing distribution of the GPLed program.

Which do you think companies really want?

Anyway, you miss one of the biggest advantages of the GPL. The GPL is just a copyright license. It doesn't depend on contract law, which is complicated, or anything else. Under the GPL, restrictions are enforced with the might of, "you have to follow these terms or else NOTHING gives you the right to use or release GPLed code". The IBM thing looks to me like you're entering into a contract of some sort-- you agree to do X just by releasing the code? Where's the signature, or whatever? I mean, maybe that's legally binding, but probably no more than a shrinkwrap license. To be honest, I seriously doubt it would be very difficult to legally weasel out of the obligations that releasing under the IBM license would entail.. thus bringing you back to the same place under the GPL, you can't distribute under the IBM license but neither can anyone else, and other people are holding code with your submarine patent. I don't know, i don't study law. Is this a reasonable doubt for me to hold?

This still makes lying to people and saying code is patent free when it is not no easier under the GPL as opposed to BSD or proprietary code licenses. This still is not much of a "flaw" in the GPL itself, just a general worry with licensing code of any sort.

This still does no good against the more threatening problem, which is people owning submarine patents and suing other people who implement that patent. Remember, you don't have to have implemented yourself the code which infringes on the patent in order to collect damages.

Is any of this innacurate?

I really doubt they will share the source with China. Sharing implies China would have the same rights as Microsoft. It's more likely they will open it to them. Saying Microsoft "opens source" to China, doesn't mean Open Source(tm). Just because it's part of a trademark doesn't change the meaning.

I know I'm a day late (and probably a dollar short) on this, but I thought a note from someone who is familiar with the subject matter in the report might be of value.

Personally, I think its a rather shoddy bit of work.

First off, and most importantly to the Slashdot crowd, last I checked MODSAF was not OpenSource, by the OSI defintion. See section 5: "No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups". MODSAF is freely available to anyone working on a DoD job, but so is just about any other DoD-bankrolled software ever written.

Secondly, he actually did a study and found that using translators to automaticly turn Fortran into C, is a bad idea (created unmaintainable crap that ran slower). I suppose there may be some PHBs out there who need to hear this, but for the rest of us...DUH!

Thirdly, he kept talking about C++ like its the paragon of OO-ness, and implicitly calling Ada a non-OO language. Both horribly wrong. The only bright spot I saw here was the use of Java for a new IOS. Java's actually a really good fit for an IOS (Instructor/Operator Station), as they are all about GUIs and network communications. I just hope the component library they used isn't "disappeared" by Sun on them. These Sims need to be maintained for decades.

I think the subject of OSS in the military is a really good topic. But MODSAF is not an example. Instead, look at Gnat (GPL), CLIPS (public domain), and RTEMS (Modified GPL). All were originally sponsored by the DoD, but now have lots of users outside the military and commercial companies supporting them. The DoD should be doing more such projects.

I can tell you with 100% certainty there is no such OSS license. There may be licenses with similar restrictions, but such a license *by definition* would not be OSS. From the Open Source Definition:

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Does anyone know of an OSS license that includes some statement to the effect of: "This software is free for use, redistribution, and modification by any entity for any purpose, as long as any form of it is never used for military purposes." ???

The definition of "open source" says, among other things, "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor".

So if you made a license that said it couldn't be used for war, by definition, it wouldn't be an open source license.

(You could change the definition of "open source", but other people have already pointed out what's wrong with that.)

Good point. I was mistaken. The clause I was referring to goes like this:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

This effectively says you must preserve the YEAR and OWNER fields associated with the copyright. It's the part that says "I did this."

Open source was originally free software. The people who tried to trademark "open source" wrote an Open Source Definition, which coincidentally, is really really close to the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

The term "Open Source" came about to try to cure the constant confusion people had with "free software" being free-beer or free-freedom. Obviously, "open source" has the same potential for confusion, as demonstrated by your response... it seems that another page of your source disagrees with you. In practice, people use "open source" to refer to practically anything under the sun where source is concerned, but you really shouldn't correct someone who is using a term more closely to to the original spirit than you are.

Darwin is licensed under the "Apple Public Source License Ver. 1.2", which is on the list of approved licences at opensource.org.

don't the enumerated factors apply only when the use is for "criticism, comment..."

Did you miss the "such as" right before the list? According to 17 USC 101, "The terms 'including' and 'such as' are illustrative and not limitative." But a republisher of out-of-print copyrighted works can still improve his legal chances by taking the "criticism and comment" angle, as ESR did with the so-called "Halloween" memos.

How can a language be open source?

I consider a language to be "open source" if it has a reference implementation available to the public as OSI Certified(TM) open source software.

If you don't like the BSD license, then don't use it as the other poster mentioned. No one is forcing you to use a license that you don't want to use. It all depends on which license is the best option for the situation. Kind of like how you could use a screwdriver to drive in a nail, but wouldn't a hammer or a mallet work better?

Well, to begin with, there's the Halloween Documents, which include amongst other things the quote:

The effect of patents and copyright in combatting Linux remains to be investigated.

Examples from Here include:

ASF: changing copyright rules by means of patents Microsoft has prohibited a Free Software programmer from writing import/export filters for its Advanced Streaming Format (ASF). The programmer wanted interoperability with a format that Microsoft is promoting. But for Microsoft, interoperability is in this case doubly disadvantageous: besides reducing the lock-in effect, on which Microsoft's platform strategy relies, it also can circumvent the locks on unauthorized copying, by which Microsoft wants to attract content providers to its ASF platform. Whereas in the DeCSS case a court ruling was necessary to enforce new draconian copyright provisions of the highly disputed Digital Millenium Act, in the ASF case a simple patent suffices to achieve the same legislative goal.

and

Microsoft bars GNU software from interoperating with CIFS During the 1st week of April 2002, Microsoft published a license for its new specification CIFS which it is trying to establish as a de facto communication standard. This license says that free software under GNU GPL, LGPL and similar licenses may not use CIFS. It bases this ban on two broad and trivial US patents with priority dates of 1989 and 1993. Preliminary search results suggst that these patents to not have EP (European Patent) counterparts. But there is nevertheless an EP patent which could possibly be used by MS for the same purpose. Critical network infrastructure such as Samba as well as new projects such as Mono seem to be affected.

There's also this account from Linux User (Warning: It's a pdf file):

Asked by CollabNet CTO Brian Behlendorf whether Microsoft will enforce its patents against open source projects, Mundie replied, "Yes, absolutely." An audience member pointed out that many open source projects aren't funded and so can't afford legal representation to rival Microsoft's. "Oh well," said Mundie. "Get your money, and let's go to court."

There are, I'm sure, other examples which could be provided, but this is just a small sample of Microsoft attitudes with respect to Patents and Free Software.

Good point. Apache strikes me as more BSD-ish than GPL (see the license for more info. According to the Open Source Definition, the BSD and Apache licenses are both Open Source.

Still, you're right. Since the author goes out of his way to tout the GPL as better than the BSD License, this discrepancy should be brought to the author's attention.

I could not care less about anything called the OSS model, because that is not well defined

If this document doesn't precisely define open source, what is it lacking?

As the parent post said, it is GPL incompatible. You can view it at the OSI site.

While I'm not one to sniff a gift fish, it's disappointing to see yet another "open source" license that will relegate Open Watcom to abandonware.

The software is free...

SCSL is not a free software license by the GNU definition, nor is it an OSI approved open source license.

As to whether the Solaris 9 operating environment for the x86 platform qualifies as gratis with a $20 shipping charge, it depends on whether Sun has licensed it for free redistribution to any third party.

How about this site?

I would have linked to Eric S. Raymond's site, but he is apparently changing web hosting services, or renaming his machines - and all links point to a dead locale... :(

(Isn't FreeBSD an oxymoron?)

If you're talking about licensing.. then not according to the Open Source Initiative. The BSD license grants you just as many, if not more freedoms, than the GPL. Perhaps you could elaborate on how you feel FreeBSD is an oxymoron, though.

Is that the gov is taking our taxes (in man hours) to stem problems arising from corporate software. which they used our tax money to purchase in the first place. Shouldn't OUR Government stay away from this sort of wasteful spending in bad economic times?

Luckily, there are a lot of people in various governments who share your opinion.

Open source just means you can see thier [sic] code...

No, that's not what "open source" means. Read the first sentence of the introduction to the definition of the Open Source Definition. This is ironic considering so many people come away with precisely the same conclusion you did and the Open Source movement was made in part to offer something believed to be clearer than the concept of software freedom (the "Free" in Free Software). You can see the results of other misconceptions about "Open Source" too.

The original authors will always retain their copyright, no matter how open a license they choose. But I guess that's not what you mean. If they choose GPL, you must make code available if you release anyway, and release that under the GPL license too. So GPL isn't really as free (as in speech) as you think.

Of course if they choose BSD, you can fork and do with the code what you pretty well please (with some caveats though).

We'll see what they'll do.

which I believe is covered by the original BSD license.

Good news: The three-clause BSD license may include an implicit guarantee of license under applicable patents licenseable by the copyright owner: "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met" (my emphasis).

If you want business models, check out Open Source.

I get the feeling that when he wrote the GPL, RMS didn't really care whether or not people would make money by releasing Free Software. He wanted to encourage people to share software freely (as in freedom), which is why the license is agnostic as to the the question of charging money.

I see this happening more and more, and I'm really concerned with this. Although there is a perfectly acceptable definition of open source that already exist for years, you see microsoft (or the press) use this definition for microsoft's shared source definition, which does not allow changes to source and is completely different.

I think every (ICT) journalist should be aware of this, or otherwise it's our task to point them to this difference.

Prior art must be public.

To make software prior art public:

• Develop a program as a proof of concept of an invention. Package it in a tarball, zip file, source RPM, or any other commonly used compressed format.
• Use PGP to sign the package digitally.
• Have one of the many e-mail notaries sign a message containing the current date in the headers and a PGP signature of the package in the body.
• Publish the package, the message you sent to the notary, and the notary's digital signature on SourceForge.net (whose parent OSDN owns Slashdot) under an OSI approved license.

You now have Pretty Good evidence that you were in possession of those bits at that time. You can back it up with a U.S. copyright registration ($30 at copyright.gov). Proof that you had actually published the package at a given time is left as an exercise for the reader (reply to this if you know how).

In 1995, M$ didn't really think of Linux as much of a threat, and more or less ignored it. In recent years, though, Linux has gotten some attention from a broader range of folks, and now M$ is a little more interested in it.

It's attacked the GNU/GPL as being "viral" (it is, and it's a good virus), we've seen the Halloween Documents: they're in a small state of panic OSs like Linux are catching on.

And I'm willing to bet that they're worried about Mac OS-X too. From what I hear of it, it's quite the operating system, and people are happy with it. Macs are slowly catching on, as well. And since they're based on an open source OS, it intergrates with the others a little easier.

Maybe they should have paid a little more attention to it and not wait ...

Would this be the De-Commoditization talked about in the first Halloween document? I mean, with 95% of the browser-market, they can monopolize the server-market with these tricks. Hello judge...?

In Halloween VII, assuming it's genuine, MS decided not to attach the OSS process but rather make economic arguments for Windows. Um.

It probably wasn't the first use, but Microsoft called that in Halloween documents.

(Then again, the GPL only effects you if you want to be affected, which isn't exactly "viral". To quote, "Software linked with GPLed libraries only inherits the GPL if it forms a single work, not any software with which they are merely distributed." The V-word is just more FUD -- it's less infectuous than, say, a click-wrap license.)

So the installer has the Aqua interface, but what about the app? Screenshots anyone? I wonder if those memos and Emails of hysteria are flowing through Micorosoft this morning.

So the installer has the Aqua interface, but what about the app? Screenshots anyone? I wonder if those memos and Emails of hysteria are flowing through Micorosoft this morning.

Actually, some of the Halloween Documents were written by ESR. From the Halloween Documents FAQ:

Halloween I, II, III and VII are real; IV, V and VI are satire/commentary consequent on various Microsoft statements.

I suppose Halloween VIII is also "real" and ESR just hasn't updated the FAQ yet since much of Halloween VIII is a reproduction of an actual memo. (Not so for IV, V, and VI.)

The OpenCascade license, although they call it open source, doesn't seem to be one of the approved Open Source licenses yet, though.

From the OpenCascade.com website:

Open CASCADE is an EADS Matra Datavision subsidiary, founded in January 2001. The 100-member team (including 80 developers) works in France. The company's mission is to provide services and support for industrial users, software editors and research workers for their development projects based on Open CASCADE 3D modeling components.

Actually, yes. MSFT has an amazing history of shilling and astroturfing:

• MSFT paid Gartner to publish MSFT material as Gartner's
• fake "grass roots" letter writing
• another fake letter writing campaign
• paid for people to hang out in AOL forums
• paid for people to hang out in ZDNet "talkback" forums
• paid for people to hang out in CompuServe forums
• MSNBC doctored Wall Street Journal material
• Stuffed an on-line ballot box
• planned to plant fake op-ed pieces in local newspapers
• funded favorable think-tank whitepapers

I'm sure there's more, that's just all I can scrounge up in a few minutes. I seem to remember another MSFT-funded think-tank ("Indepence Institute"?) white paper, and there was an interesting "Brill's Content" article on how MSFT tracks reporters and what they write about MSFT. Actually, isn't the above enough? 10 items from 9 different sources about all varieties of shilling and astroturfing in forums from small to nation-wide. Yes, I think it's prudent to believe that MSFT employees watch Slashdot and mod-up pro-MSFT articles, or even submit them.

I'd go so far as to say that the average person should be suspicious of any pro-MSFT article or viewpoint posted in a public forum. If you, the reader, are pro-MSFT, I'm sorry: if you lie down with pigs, you can't expect to wake up in the morning smelling like roses.

Yes, and it's routine and appropriate for vendors to discuss the measures they'll take against the competition. What is not quite so routine is to see the discussion imply a cold-blooded acceptance of methods including FUD tactics and dirty tricks such as ``de-commoditizing'' open standards into monopolistic lock-in devices.

Questions about annotation and authenticity are covered in the faq here.

Don't know how valid the answers are, but there's something to look at...