YaST to Become Open Source

Space_Soldier writes "According to News.com, YaST is going open source: 'For years, SUSE has considered its YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool) software for installing, configuring and managing Linux an advantage over its competitors and forbade them from incorporating it into the products they sold. But with the new plan, to be announced Monday at Novell's Brainshare conference, the company will release YAST under the GPL, sources familiar with the plan said.'" Several years ago, when I first used YaST, I found it to be superior to the rest of the all-in-one administation tools around at the time. It was generally regarded as a great program, save for the licensing. Today, that's no longer a concern.

Comments

Pernicious

[Z4rd0Z]

From the article:
...YAST's current license carries prohibitions on distribution: "Distribution of the YAST program, its sources...and the works derived thereof for a charge require the prior written consent of SuSE Linux," according to the license.

Bruce Perens, who helped write the Open Source Definition and is an open-source advocate, described the permission provision as "pernicious" in an interview.

Let's see here...
$ dict pernicious

Pernicious \Per*ni"cious\, a. [L. perniciosus, from pernicies
destruction, from pernecare to kill or slay outright; per + necare to kill, slay: cf. F. pernicieux. Cf. {Nuisance},
{Necromancy}.]
Having the quality of injuring or killing; destructive; very
mischievous; baleful; malicious; wicked.

For god's sake, will someone fire Bruce Perens and the other whacked out leaders of the Open Source/Free Software movement? I love open source software, but can we please have some reasonable people speaking for it, once?

Now mod me the fuck down, zealots.