Slashdot Mirror

True, Open Source is not equal to GPL, but it is a superset. If you are going to talk about Open Source on Slashdot, you won't be speaking the same language unless you are talking about the Open Source Definition. If Open Source ever means anything besides this, then I'm going to start only calling it Free Software.

I dont believe that Linux can die in the same way as DEC, because (as even MS in the Halloween documents admitted) GNU/Linux isnt a company or even so much a product - the unkillable and killer part is the *process*.

And while companies may rise and fall, the process will always be there whatever the current trendy OS/Application.

In the spirit of the Open Source movement, we have established the Gore 2000 Volunteer Source Code Project. www.algore2000.com is an "open site".

1. The software must be freely redistributable.
2. Source code must be included with the distribution.
3. Derivative works, as long as they are clearly labelled as such, are allowed.
4. The license must not discriminate against any field of endeavour.
5. The license must not be specific to a product.

In the spirit of the Open Source movement, we have established the Gore 2000 Volunteer Source Code Project. www.algore2000.com is an "open site".

1. The software must be freely redistributable.
2. Source code must be included with the distribution.
3. Derivative works, as long as they are clearly labelled as such, are allowed.
4. The license must not discriminate against any field of endeavour.
5. The license must not be specific to a product.

In the spirit of the Open Source movement, we have established the Gore 2000 Volunteer Source Code Project. www.algore2000.com is an "open site".

1. The software must be freely redistributable.
2. Source code must be included with the distribution.
3. Derivative works, as long as they are clearly labelled as such, are allowed.
4. The license must not discriminate against any field of endeavour.
5. The license must not be specific to a product.

Sun are releasing Solaris 8 under a license which lets you obtain the source, but not distribute and modify it; so this license isn't Open Source (as certified by OSI) nor Free, as deined in the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

I.e. this is "free as in beer", not "free as in speech".

Intellectual rights are created to insure credit. Why does this have to be in a monetary form?

Uh, because "kudos" doesn't pay the rent?

It seems to me any smart capatalist would fleece consumerism by freeing and then supporting a products path into the hands of the market.

So artists should give away their work for free, and then make money by somehow "supporting" that free product? In what way does one "support" music? And what makes you think that enough "support" payments will actually be made to actually allow the artist to make up the costs of producing the initial product.

The problem here is that the open-source community and the corporations are taking to opposite extremes in this issue, when what we really need is some sort of middle ground. Developing music, or movies, or computer software has a lot of up-front costs. Hence, the corporations feel that they need to restrict copying in order to make back their investment, plus make some profit. Making "one more copy" of data is free though, so open-source extremists say that copying should be completely free.

Both of these sides are right to an extent, and also wrong to an extent. The producers of the data do deserve to make back their investment if people are really making use of that data. It's pretty obvious that the media companies are gouging consumers though. The prices are way higher than they should be, and the actual artists get a disproportionately small "piece of the pie".

The open source extremists are right in that making another copy is free, so it shouldn't cost that much to get another copy. The problem is, how do the artists get paid for all of the work they did? Open source extremists would probably say it could work like open source software. There aren't any good business models for OSS either though.

Imagine if music used the open source model, as exemplified by Red Hat, et al. Musicians would write music, and not get paid for it. They'd have to work as waiters or cashiers for a living, or maybe to some live performances if they're lucky. The music labels would sell "distros" that would have music from various artists. They would have some sound engineers on staff to do some tweaks to the sound on their distros to make them sound a bit better. You could either download the music for free, or buy the music in the store (but you're really buying a box and "technical support"). In the latter case, only the label makes any money. The musicians rarely, if ever, make a cent off of the work they did. Yup, that sure sounds like a great business model...

Before you go and say "the artists could make money in some other way", think about what that other way would be. Does it apply to all artists? (Musicians that create symphonic electronica, like Galbatron, can't exactly do "live performances", for example...)

While I do think open source software is great (yes, I've contributed code to a few projects), I'm getting a bit sick of seeing people say "the existing business models suck" and suggesting that evrything should be open source without actually proposing any business models that would be practical in the real world.

And before someone points me over to the business models on ESR's opensource.org web page, most of them are red herrings... (think about how many of them are 100% open source, and actually ensure that the developers get paid for their work)

Open Source is very open (forgive the pun) in terms of what it applies to. I can Open Source my new Widget2000 code and only sell it to people who buy Widget2000 and require them to not reveal the source code to anyone else. Or I can Open Source it and post it on a public FTP site.

As someone else has pointed out, neither of those actions, by itself, meets the Open Source Definition.

Furthermore, as regards both the OSD--which is derived from Bruce Perens' Debian Free Software Guidelines--and GNU's (i.e. RMS's) definition of free software, your two examples of what you do with your Widget2000 source code are probably not as different as you may think. That is, even the GPL allows you to only give source code to people who pay you for your product--it just specifies that you can't stop them from revealing the code to anyone else, or indeed from licensing it to anyone else under anything other than the GPL. Likewise, posting your source code to a public FTP site doesn't make it open source if those who download it aren't allowed to redistribute the code, and use it in derivative works or fork it.

Unless your license allows these things, then the proper term for it is not "open source" but "revealed source". (Or so says the OSS language police.) Companies seeking to capitalize on the open source movement may call actions like the ones you describe "open sourcing", but they are not--as we have understood the terms. Of course, if even those of us on /. don't understand what open source really means, and point out such bastardizations of the term, then pretty soon it won't mean anything anyways.

Read the open source definition.

http://www.opensource.org/

Alright, while I think this would be Really Cool (TM) and all, I think we have to remember who we are dealing with here. The company which has recently proven it has more faces then a pair of dice: Sun Microsystems.

These are the people who let the Blackdown Java porting effort do all the work, and then took it all from them with no credit.

These are the people who have said several times (here, here, and as far back as here) that Solaris isn't just going to be free, but Open Source.

These are the people who pushed Java as an open standard, and then -- once many companies had tied their future to it -- pulled out of the standards process. Then, when others suggested going forward with a Java standard without Sun, claimed that their own public documentation was not complete enough for anyone to do that.

So, when they say Solaris is going to be "free", I have to say: "Sure, and I have a bridge to sell you. It's in Brooklyn. Great view of the water."

I think Sun's products are pretty good (they're certainly a hell of a lot better then Micros~1) and that Java still has a lot of promise, but I'm still not gonna trust Sun any further then I can throw an E10K.

I beleve the LGPL (or maybe even stright GPL) works, as long as you don't mind shipping source to all your "binary customers" (or shipping it on request). Of corse it won't prevent other people from doing the same thing, but Red Hat seems to be making enough money even with SuSE, Caldera, Slackware, et. al. in the ring.

However I think you may want to look at the MPL (Mozilla Public Licence) as well. It has a few advantages to people who want a shrinkwrap and free reslease:

• If someone modifys your MPLed source to use a Patented algo, they also assign the rights to use the patent (for at least the MPLed program) to anyone else who has the MPLed program. I assume this only works if they have the right to assign rights (i.e. if Lucent added an XOR cursor to Mozilla the right would assign, but if I did it, it wouldn't assign because I don't hold a patent on XOR cursors, Lucent does). This is applicable even to software where you are not intrested in doing a shrinkwrap release. It is a large part of why I picked it for w3juke.
• You (the original author) are granted the special right to make your own modifications to the code without releasing them. In the long run it will be simpler to release them and get the benifit of more coders debugging, but it might be helpful to add a few features to a shrinkwrap version and fold them into the real release later (something like what Aladin does with Ghostscript).
• It is far better to use a licence people accept as Open Source allready (after all people accept Mozilla as OSS, even if there is debate on how successful it has been). If you end up with the LGPL or BSDL and need to add/change it a little then you could be in for a bumpy ride, both in getting it accepted, and later in finding out if it does what you want if it gets chalanged.

You might want to look at The Open Source website, expecally their short approved licences list.

Lastly I think you might want to look at Setting Up Shop: The Business of Open-Source Software which has a discussion of some of hte licences, and some bisness models to make money useing them (I havn't read this yet, just skimed it, so I appolgise if it isn't as good as I hope).

I beleve the LGPL (or maybe even stright GPL) works, as long as you don't mind shipping source to all your "binary customers" (or shipping it on request). Of corse it won't prevent other people from doing the same thing, but Red Hat seems to be making enough money even with SuSE, Caldera, Slackware, et. al. in the ring.

However I think you may want to look at the MPL (Mozilla Public Licence) as well. It has a few advantages to people who want a shrinkwrap and free reslease:

• If someone modifys your MPLed source to use a Patented algo, they also assign the rights to use the patent (for at least the MPLed program) to anyone else who has the MPLed program. I assume this only works if they have the right to assign rights (i.e. if Lucent added an XOR cursor to Mozilla the right would assign, but if I did it, it wouldn't assign because I don't hold a patent on XOR cursors, Lucent does). This is applicable even to software where you are not intrested in doing a shrinkwrap release. It is a large part of why I picked it for w3juke.
• You (the original author) are granted the special right to make your own modifications to the code without releasing them. In the long run it will be simpler to release them and get the benifit of more coders debugging, but it might be helpful to add a few features to a shrinkwrap version and fold them into the real release later (something like what Aladin does with Ghostscript).
• It is far better to use a licence people accept as Open Source allready (after all people accept Mozilla as OSS, even if there is debate on how successful it has been). If you end up with the LGPL or BSDL and need to add/change it a little then you could be in for a bumpy ride, both in getting it accepted, and later in finding out if it does what you want if it gets chalanged.

You might want to look at The Open Source website, expecally their short approved licences list.

Lastly I think you might want to look at Setting Up Shop: The Business of Open-Source Software which has a discussion of some of hte licences, and some bisness models to make money useing them (I havn't read this yet, just skimed it, so I appolgise if it isn't as good as I hope).

The open content license mentioned previously also seems useful.

This isn't quite as bad as Unisys, yes, but this still really pisses me off. It's like Fraunhofer with the MPEG-1 Layer III stuff. "Oh look, here's a technology for everybody, an *open* standard."



After it gains acceptance, then the patents are announced. What happens to the open source efforts then? Last I heard Fraunhofer was trying to get free encoder implementations to pay up. Any changes in store for the open-source WAP gateway now?



We need to stress what "open" should mean. An open standard should mean no patents. It should mean "Open Source-friendly". It should also mean as low a barrier to entry as possible. The commoditized protocols and markets that Microsoft fears (see the Halloween documents) are precisely what is best for consumers, and for free software hackers the world over.



Martin

This isn't quite as bad as Unisys, yes, but this still really pisses me off. It's like Fraunhofer with the MPEG-1 Layer III stuff. "Oh look, here's a technology for everybody, an *open* standard."

After it gains acceptance, then the patents are announced. What happens to the open source efforts then? Last I heard Fraunhofer was trying to get free encoder implementations to pay up. Any changes in store for the open-source WAP gateway now?

We need to stress what "open" should mean. An open standard should mean no patents. It should mean "Open Source-friendly". It should also mean as low a barrier to entry as possible. The commoditized protocols and markets that Microsoft fears (see the Halloween documents) are precisely what is best for consumers, and for free software hackers the world over.

Martin

This is the stupidest thing I've heard today. The only GOOD open souce software is that which complies with the Open Source Definition. It has got little or nothing to do with volounteering.

The "official" Open Source Definition tries to define "open source" more tightly. But since the term isn't trademarked and since it has a different common sense meaning, it fails. Furthermore, even the "Open Source Definition" has some holes in it.

In the short term, I suggest people stop getting excited just because a company announces releasing something "open source". We should wait until the sources and the license are available for everybody to look at.

In the long term, I think we need to replace the term "open source" with something more self-descriptive.

I've been trying to make sense out of some of these arguments about Open Source software, but I can't. How does declaring a project or program as "Open Source" dictate the release schedule the developers have to follow?

Please explain how creators of information (computer software, books, music, movies, etc.) would be compensated for their work in a world where IP did not exist.

Without IP, copying would become the norm, rather than the exception. A very small percentage of users would pay for the information. The price of the information would increase, and the salaries of the creators would decrease. Creators would become fewer due to the lower salaries (there are many in it for the money, though I'm not one of them). Paying customers would also decrease, since the price of the software would go through the stratosphere.

That is, unless you can think of some other way for the creators to be compensated. I have yet to hear a suitable alternative. Hint: all four business models on ESR's Business Case for Open Source page are bogus (except for widget frosting, which really only applies to hardware vendors).

Hmm, I wonder whether this'll get "Flamebait", "Troll", or "Offtopic"?

It meets the Open Source Definition, which means (among other things) that it probably meets the Debian Free Software Guidelines. On the other hand, I personally don't like its restrictions and would hesitate to modify covered software.

On the other hand, Apple has already revised the license once, mostly due to their work with OSI. If they get enough feedback on how the APSL could be improved, we might see it changed again, for the better.

Sadly, the term "open source" has become so overused that I think it is pretty much meaningless. Even the official open source definition is not sufficiently specific to be useful to me.

So, until we see the specific license, do you really care whether something is "open source"? I don't.

this is not possible with linux, as paragraph #7 of the GPL prohibits distribution of the software in this case.

another license which is more free in the patents issue is the MPL/NPL. here the original author grants the user a license for all his patents necessary to use the software.

somthing which really should be changed, is that the open source definition doesn't mention patents at all. software is not free unless it's free of patent alfortihms or comes with a license to use them.

software is protected under the copyright- and the patent-law. ( unlike physical machines, which are just protected by patents ). the copyright-law is necessary for free software to be able to enforce the copyleft to keep it free. the patent-law doesn't bring any benefit to free software. and we should as soon as possible start to learn how to deal with it.

patent-law gets promoted to foster innovations. i think this is plain silly. look it the innovations which where used to build the internet. the internet's basement is free software (apache, bind, sendmail, linux, *bsd, perl, php, majordomo, ... ) and all these didn't get developed BECAUSE of patent-law, but DESPITE it.

we need to deal with patents in all open source licenses and in the open source definition! write to Your congress-guy today!

Signal 11, with all due respect, I'm not sure that I agree with you.

I guess the first order of business is to say "the Computer Geek ticket." But since computer geekdom is what brings most of us to Slashdot, I think the computer part was a given.

Second, you're right, geeks are not limited to computers. But it is those computers that, by and large, bind us. As a large part of our lives, they can, at times, become a cause. (ie, etoy, encryption rights, privacy, etc.) So we choose to focus on that afor the purpose of this discussion.

Thirdly, you're right, geeks do have a wide range of political tastes. But it seems that most of the geeks that I know are Democrats, frequently with Liberatarian leanings. And the more that I've thought about this, the more that it seems logical to me.

We [computer] geeks are all about rules. Every language, standard, RFC and protocol is a set of rules by which we abide. Thanks to things like the RFC system, these rules can be changed. But we recognise the importance of a core set of standards by which further standards can be devloped.

This, IMHO, is quite similar to our US system involving the Constitution, with amendments and, of course, thousands upon thousands of laws within the scope of that Constitution. A rule set that can be modified, with subrules that must fit within the intitial standard.

To many of us, this is extremely logical. It fits into all of our programming knowledge neatly. So the Libertarian Party, whose core value is upholding the Constitution, is an extremely logical party to identify with. Further, Democrats, for the most part, tend to be more in line with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (Not always, of course, but more so than Republicans.)

So, we have a political leaning. And we have causes based on our desire to have the freedom to live the way that we like to. To export strong encryption, to use strong excryption, to be free from government monitoring, to be free from censorship, and to be free to engage in the computing practices that we see fit on our own systems, from disassembly to peaceable protest.

In conclusion: Yes, Signal 11, I think that there is a Geek Ticket. The candidate that best matches our common ideals to have the freedoms to take part in the open sourced, copylefted, quasi-socialist ventures that so many of us live for and love so much. We don't need to form a new party or anything, but I do think that it would be helpful for us to determine which candidate best meets our common ideals.

And that's why I think this is a great story with great threads. :)

Remember this comment from the holloween document?

De-commoditize protocols & applications

OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.

I'm not paranoid. I do not think it likely that MS is directly behind the CCS mess as an attack against Open Source projects. On the other hand, I doubt MS is unhappy to see our struggling with DVD.

I would have bought a DVD drive a while ago, but I refuse to let windows touch my hard drive again.

FWIW, the Genesis3D SDK is in violation of the Open Source definition. While it does indeed make its source code available, the licensing terms are fairly restrictive, so it is not free software.
A much cooler project is Crystal Space, the LGPL'd cross-platform multi-API 3D game engine. It's nowhere nearly as complete as Genesis, but shows a lot of promise. I suspect today's announcement will be a boon to CS, since any of the code in Quake can now go into CS.

why doesn't the slashdot community BOYCOTT microsoft, i mean gee, we should, we shouldn't use there products! That'll show em. -1 Sarcasm

Some of us already are. I don't buy their stuff. I try to dissuade others from "following the bandwagon" by buying MS products like candy as well (with limited, yet progressing, success). And last I checked, they already have noticed.

I'm currently writing an e-mail to Yahoo right now... I'll post it when it's finished.

If, as Jamie suggests, the Netscape chapters are just a rewrite of Frank Hecker's writings, then a credit is almost required.

I don't have a copy of the book handy, but I believe that I was in fact credited for the substantial chunks of material than Wendy Goldman Rohm quoted from my paper. Unfortunately, if I remember correctly the way she quoted me gives a misleading impression to the reader, because the paper she's quoting is the public paper that I wrote after the Communicator source release, not the original paper I wrote for internal consumption at Netscape. Thus, for example, the book quotes me as discussing choices between various licenses, business models, etc., and (to my mind at least) gives the impression that this stuff went into Netscape's decision to release source. However that material was written after the Mozilla source release, based on both the Mozilla license discussions and some of the opensource.org material.

The complete and authoritative history of the Communicator source code release has not yet been written. In my opinion the best sources so far are the last chapter of Josh Quittner's book Speeding the Net, which covers the period up to the January 1998 source code announcement, and the chapter in Open Sources, which covers the period between the January announcement and the actual release of the code at the end of March.

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

I'd also be happier if the OPL were certified Open Source.

I agree in principle, but if you are talking about the effort at http://www.opensource.org/, then, again, they are only talking about programs, not documentation, and they use terminology specific to programs and not applicable to documents.

I would like to see their certification program extended to documents, but that does not seem to be a priority for them now.

I'd also be happier if the OPL were certified Open Source.

I agree in principle, but if you are talking about the effort at http://www.opensource.org/, then, again, they are only talking about programs, not documentation, and they use terminology specific to programs and not applicable to documents.

I would like to see their certification program extended to documents, but that does not seem to be a priority for them now.

You realize, of course, that any license which forbids use by residents of the U.S. would not satisfy the the Open Source Definition. Of course, neither would one that would forbid use by residents of Cuba, Syria, Iraq, etc.
Christopher A. Bohn

A royalty would be a payment to the original author; broadly publishing your source would not qualify. Be very suspicious of claims the OSD does not admit the GPL as a conforming license; it started out as the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which were designed for a purely Free and GNU-centric distribution, and the current maintainers still note GPL- and LGPL-related tweaks to the definition.

Great, that means once you license their source, you can modify it and/or legally redistribute it to whoever you like at no extra cost! Or are you using a different definition of "open source" than everyone else?

It is not my opinion, it is the opinion of the Open Source Initiative, they guys who coined that term. If you go read their site, you'll find out that by Open Source they mean exactly what the Free Software Foundation means with Free Software or what Debian means with their Debian Free Software Guidelines.

Alejo.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I think the term Open Source (instead of Free Software) was a bad idea.

Yes, it is true, persons don't have to think about the freedom when talking about Open Source. But in practice, as is seen on this article, persons tend to forget that, according to the Open Source Initiative, Open Source and Free Software mean exactly the same thing.

I'd rather have persons confuse Free as in Freedom with Free as in $0 sometimes than have persons think something can be Open Source but not Free Software.

Don't forget it: If it is not Free Software, it can not be Open Source.

No, poster, it is not your fault, it is Eric Raymond's.

Alejo

Any license approved by the OSI is allowed. Other licenses are approved on a case-by-case basis.
See:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
http://sourceforge.net/docs/s ite/faq.php#whohost-main

As usual, ESR could not loose an oportunity to promote himself. I don't feel represented by him and refuse to admit his atitude. Ho cares if Linux is adopted by China, Cuba or Mars? It is free software, which means any peoble is free to use it, not only those blessed by ESR. And please read the Open Source (TM) definition at http://www.opensource.org/osd.htm to see that open-source software must have ``5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups. The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.''

Read here.

Specifically:

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups.

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. (rationale)

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. (rationale)

In other words, if you do what you're talking about, it's no longer Open Source Software.

--

Read here.

Specifically:

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups.

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. (rationale)

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. (rationale)

In other words, if you do what you're talking about, it's no longer Open Source Software.

--

Read here.

Specifically:

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups.

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. (rationale)

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. (rationale)

In other words, if you do what you're talking about, it's no longer Open Source Software.

--

First I must warn all that I have long since dropped out of my business analysis train of thought as I steadily receded back into loving electronics and OS's - *NIX being my favorite.

Businesses and managers are very impressionable folks. In that I mean they truly believe in commercialism. I have worked with government and commercial sector and I have seen the way salesmen can appeal to these goons. With the government it is - well kinda perverse in a way but it works, with business it's easy -- we offer you this and get that.

So let's break off and follow that last statement for a second, we offer this and we are saying you get that.

Now let's apply the late 80's early 90's MS edition of that very same statement:

If you want that you must buy this in order to survive and have that, oh yeah we forgot to mention you have to also buy this other pile of sh*t as well but we can get inot that later . . .

Now come back to the present.

Joe Blow IT Manager, the very same schmuck whose light up when the dancing paperclip "finally does voice recognition" (f*n idiot) sees this. He now says - sh*t, maybe sinking all of that $$$$ into M$ could kick back - - QUICK, what do the other InfoWorld Ad say? Who should I turn to?

Yes this will happen. Even some delusional idiots will actually turn to Apple to solve their "hi end needs". This will be the first fallout.

But hey, all society advancement comes at great pains and cost, this will be one of them. By the same token just as many smart IT Managers will sit back and "see where things are going" and probably apt for a conservative UNIX Company or quite possibly FreeBSD or Slakware (despite it's "freeness" Slakware still boasts the best uptime and stability in distro - not neccessarily kernel).

IT Managers, believe it or not, think very short term as within 2-3 years or so. They are not forward thinkers (well not most of them I am sure the gang at Red Hat might take me up on that) so many saw NT as a good thing for the next year or maybe 2 years. This makes sense when the byline of your job is "keep from gettin' fired".

So, first, businesses will begin to lose confidence in MS, some will stick with them but many (as is already happening) will turn to companies like VALINUX and Sun.

The home computing market gradually lags anyway due to out of pocket expense limits so breaching the MS infiltration will take several years, but I believe as more becomes available and usable, more home users will seek alternatives. They may or may not turn to Linux, that is hard to tell (but I can say, the time is ripe for FreeBSD to make it's move).

Ultimately home users will not change their hbits for a long long time, I think everyone already sees this. I expect a shift to take place in 2-3 years (given the current buying trends).

I mention them in the same context here because I mean the same thing - both GNU / Linux and OSI now will see something that has been slowly and quietly happening for a long time.

Converts

Developers and geeks alike will also lose confidence in the almighty M$. We now will be given an opportunity to bring in and cultivate untapped talent that simply "didn't know any better" but have now awoken. This will most likely happen (in large numbers) after a ruling which is pretty sure to go against M$. It is already happening, as a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Linuxnewbie.org's mailing list jumps a little next week.

This isn't much different from other breakups as far as business is concerned. Geeks, however, will reap great reward which as all /. readers know is what matters.

Why do we need another group to act in our best interests? The people that most want to lead the community are usually the ones least likely to be able to do it (the right way).

It is wrong wrong wrong and extremely impolite to accuse GPL of being a viral license because an application that links against or is based on a GPL'd app must be GPL.

Yes, it is wrong, not in the sense of immoral (as you had it), but in the sense of incorrect: the GPL does allow you to link non-GPL'ed code with GPL'ed code; it just doesn't allow you to link code that has a license which is more restrictive than GPL to GPL'ed code.

QT is more restrictive than GPL. This is because you can only distribute modifications to QT as patch files.

One idea might be a new license, identical to GPL, with the exception than this new license would allow linking with any licence compliant with the Open Source Definition.

The new license could be called OSDPL.

Please be more honest. What Sun is offering doesn't meet the Open Source Definition. If you want to subsidize their proprietary work, knock yourself out, but don't try to fool people into thinking they're allowed to make use of Sun's code.

Could it be that acceptance of one type of license vs. another simply boils down to readability, i.e. whether a mere mortal can quickly scan and understand it?

In this respect, the BSD and GPL licenses rule, closely followed by the Perl artistic license. All of these are clearly written with understandability in mind, not just with a lawyer's mindset.

However, the licenses that Netscape produced, and worse still what SUN published with their SCSL is so bloated and peppered with legal terms that the average developer may tire and loose momentum before he/she actually reaches the end of the document.

I know I only finished reading the SCSL because I made it a point to be able to report to users here on campus what it may mean to them.

I would think that at least in the academic sector and among the crowd of 'hobby enthusiasts', people have little patience to wade through legalese, hence there will be little participation in 'open source' projects that are marred with a long and incomprehensible license.

ESR stated that a plausible promise will motivate people to participate. This may include an interesting project, strong design and reasonably clean, understandable (and maybe even working) source. I propose that clean and strong design be also applied to the license (or simply use an established and accepted license). lest noone will bother.

Could it be that acceptance of one type of license vs. another simply boils down to readability, i.e. whether a mere mortal can quickly scan and understand it?

In this respect, the BSD and GPL licenses rule, closely followed by the Perl artistic license. All of these are clearly written with understandability in mind, not just with a lawyer's mindset.

However, the licenses that Netscape produced, and worse still what SUN published with their SCSL is so bloated and peppered with legal terms that the average developer may tire and loose momentum before he/she actually reaches the end of the document.

I know I only finished reading the SCSL because I made it a point to be able to report to users here on campus what it may mean to them.

I would think that at least in the academic sector and among the crowd of 'hobby enthusiasts', people have little patience to wade through legalese, hence there will be little participation in 'open source' projects that are marred with a long and incomprehensible license.

ESR stated that a plausible promise will motivate people to participate. This may include an interesting project, strong design and reasonably clean, understandable (and maybe even working) source. I propose that clean and strong design be also applied to the license (or simply use an established and accepted license). lest noone will bother.

Could it be that acceptance of one type of license vs. another simply boils down to readability, i.e. whether a mere mortal can quickly scan and understand it?

In this respect, the BSD and GPL licenses rule, closely followed by the Perl artistic license. All of these are clearly written with understandability in mind, not just with a lawyer's mindset.

However, the licenses that Netscape produced, and worse still what SUN published with their SCSL is so bloated and peppered with legal terms that the average developer may tire and loose momentum before he/she actually reaches the end of the document.

I know I only finished reading the SCSL because I made it a point to be able to report to users here on campus what it may mean to them.

I would think that at least in the academic sector and among the crowd of 'hobby enthusiasts', people have little patience to wade through legalese, hence there will be little participation in 'open source' projects that are marred with a long and incomprehensible license.

ESR stated that a plausible promise will motivate people to participate. This may include an interesting project, strong design and reasonably clean, understandable (and maybe even working) source. I propose that clean and strong design be also applied to the license (or simply use an established and accepted license). lest noone will bother.

You are absolutely correct... I will submit the Gnuidea design ideas for Waimea to professionals like Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Systems for review and will GPL everything so people can point out all my flaws and hopefully, in time, we can make something really really good.

Justin

Sure, but that still leaves the question why they didn't include Qt2.

Qt2 is under the QPL (see www.troll.no), which is a DFSG-free / Open Source license. Qt is best known for being the library upon which KDE is built, but it is a useful library for GUI development in and of itself.

The OSD is essntially identical to the DFSG. The DFSG were created as a ruleset to decide whether a particular software's license should be considered free or not (disregarding dependency on non-free software).

In my opinion, the DFSG is still the closest thing we have to a definition of free software.

I agree with RMS that the way "Open Source" is used often downplays or ignores the freedom aspect, and that freedom aspect is very important.

Some argue that the DFSG needs to be tightened, but so far I'm unconvinced by the arguments I've seen.