Oops, that should have been "Conference of Presidents" rather than "Council of Ministers" in the first sentence.
The Conference of Presidents is made up of the President of the Parliament and the chairmen of political groups, so is another group of senior MEPs.
It's the Council of Ministers that's the arena in which the A-items keep not quite getting through, where the government ministers responsible for various departments (i.e. Agriculture & Fisheries) get together, and if there are A-items on their agenda, then they generally get approved without discussion, and so pass onto the second reading before the European Parliament.
Sorry about the confusion -- Acronyms are swimming before my eyes;-)
While JURI (a committee of Members of the European Parliament) and the Council of Ministers have both voted for a restart, the European Commission are still legally allowed to push this through to it's second reading if they manage to put it on an agenda as an A-item.
A-items are a rubber stamping of translations, of previously agreed directives. So far, Poland have been blocking the A-item from getting onto any agendas, but they seem to have finally been nobbled.
Just in time, Denmark have decided to dig their toes in, but if they fold there is still an oportunity to push the directive through.
Of course, flouting the wills of MEPs in this way might be enough to galvanise them into kicking the whole thing out in the second reading, despite the fact that the voting system at that stage is rigged against such an eventuality.
the UK patent office is very aware of the problems that patent abuse can cause
The UKPO speaks with a forked tongue.
They have a history of saying things that mean multiple things, depending on the listener's point of view, and then campaigning strongly behind closed doors to allow unfettered patentability.
The most glaring example of this is their use of "status quo" which one might think meant that they were trying to preserve the current ban on software patents, whereas they actually want to preserve the current practice of the EPO of issuing them, by making that practice legal across the EU.
except that apt-geting asterisk will get you a release candidate version (0.9.1+1.0RC1-8) and this news item is about the release of the actual version 1.0.0
There was a version of the Debian package that was labeled as 1.0 a while back, but that was as a result of a versioning cock-up in the asterisk CVS.
At present, you're probably better off grabbing the source and reading the README.
That's right -- I'm running it on a piece of junk that was about to be thrown in a skip by one of my customers --- stick two new & shiny 120GB drives in, with software raid, and make a mondoarchive backup on a CD and you have all the warm & cudly feelings that Ocelot Wreak was after for a cost of about 150 pounds (and that includes the 2 ISDN2 cards bought via eBay, and an FXO card).
Of course, I'm using a minimal Debian install on it, so it's not got X windows, so no screen saver discomfort:-)
I certinly wasn't trying to imply that Sun's employees are daft.
The underlying issue that I have a problem with is the clueless customers, especially the British government at present, who decide that they should adopt an Open Source purchasing policy (on the grounds that it prevents vendor lock-in, say), and then invite Sun to tender JDS, and IBM to tender WebSphere, neither of which qualify.
Even more depressing is when they justify their decision to ignore their own policy on the basis that they need to go with a name they can trust, like Sun or IBM.
Doing that would allow Microsoft to justifiably claim that they'd been excluded for the tender, and then spin that as Open Source being a scam dreamed up by their competitors to unfairly exclude them from tendering for what turn out to be proprietary software sales.
Proprietary vendors are perfectly happy to associate themselves with the term Open, and will happily imply that the fact that something is based on Open Standards probably means that it's Open Source, and so eligible for funding under a government Open Source initaitive. This certainly seems to be part of the intent behind MS's adoption of XML for some things.
Those same proprietary vendors are much less likely to be willing to have the word "free" associated with software that they are hoping to license to customers for cash.
I don't think either term is inherently more meaningful to the uninitiated, but at least the one with Free in it is less likely to be hijacked by band-wagon-jumping businesses.
Hm, Sun's Java runtime == Open Source? I think not.
StarOffice == Open Source? I think not.
If we'd stuck to calling Free Software, Free Software, we wouldn't have to put up with this nonsense, but as it is we have a situation where people are in the throws of defining new government policy in the UK stating that the default purchasing policy in the UK should include "Open Source" software, despite the fact that nobody involved seems to have any clear idea what Open Source means.
That allows Sun to come in and say something like "StarOffice is Open Source becasue you get to see some of the source" and the NHS folks presumably say "Fair enough, where do we sign for a site license?"
I'm surprised Microsoft don't go totally ape about this, but then again, they probably think that JDS is open source too. It wouldn't surprise me if the Sun sales folks think that it's Open Source, in the same way that most SUSE sales folks used to think that SuSE was Open Source, despite the old YaST license.
Sorry to be pedantic, but what you describe is NOT Open Source.
Just because you get the source, is not sufficient to qualify as Open Source.
The Open Source Definition is effectively the same document as the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and as such both have conditions that require that the software be alowed to be redistributed, even if modified or aggregated:
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
...
3. Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
...
7 Distribution of License
The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.
If your not careful, you may find that the client can claim that since they comisioned the work, it is what is known as a "work for hire", which would (as I understand it, IANAL) mean that they own the copyright, not you.
One way to avoid this, without the need to hire expensive lawyers, is to ensure that neither of you own exclusive copyright --- how do you manage that? By ensuring that you use some code that is GPLed by other people, so that the final work is bound to be GPLed as well.
Then, as long as you get the clients permission to have a copy of the code at your site, even if they try to claim copyright on the work you wrote for them, you can claim your GPL granted rights on the code they distributed to you, so at least you don't end up with nothing.
The only question you need to ask yourself then is: "Is the client wanting to get into the software industry?". If the answer to that is "No" then chances are they will not be tempted to redistribute the GPLed code that they have, becuase they're busy doing whatever it is that they actually make money at. If that is the case, then after this deal, you still have the only copy of the code that is practically available to the world, so you still get to make money out of it.
Even if one of your subesequent clients does redistribute the GPLed code, you are still the experts in that code, so unless you're doing a spectacularly poor job of supporting it, you'll still get the calls, so could find that your business is actually increased by this.
Also, people deploying your code in new situations, without being your customers, is actually to your benefit, becasue they are likely to find bugs for you, which you are not obliged to fix, but which you could offer to fix for money. You then get to update your paying customers before they are bitten by that bug, which is likely to keep them cheerful.
I sold my first commercial support for a GNU/Linux system almost 9 years ago:
http://www.hands.com/100005.png
If they still wanted me to support the versions of software that were installed on those machines, I would, but as it happens in that period they've upgraded from slackware (0.99?? kernel) to Debian all the way through to 3.0.
They've also been privatised and split into three separate companies, two of which still use the grandchildren of these first systems, for which I still provide support.
So, while a national institution like British Coal is now history, we're still around, and still willing to support any version of software our clients wish to use.
Tell me a single proprietary vendor who would make the same claim (about historical support), and I'll send you a cookie;-)
Also, when you phone us, like most Free Software firms, you get to talk to someone that actually knows things.
Call a proprietary vendors support line and you'll generally get to talk to some poor sod who is living the nightmare of a call centre, reading pointless scripts at angry customers. This does not generally do much for your inner harmony, and it almost never fixes the problem.
Who (besides RMS) ever said that costless, non-open software was bad?
If you read what I wrote, you'll see that I certainly didn't in the post you're replying to. All I was doing was pointing out that UL is not Open Source, and that the story has that wrong.
I suppose I've always valued liberty over equality,
Well, I tend to favour Free Software, because I'm rather protective of my liberty, and can do without being tied into a supplier in a way that stops me doing what I want to the software on my computers --- You want the freedom to discard you freedom, I want to make sure that people are aware that they are discarding their freedom when they do so. I think we're on the same side here.
Unfortunately the Open Source Initiative, in their wisdom accepted that Apple License that both Debian and the Free Software Foundation rejected, but that is a tiny thing.
Getting the source is nowhere near sufficient to qualify for "Open Source" status.
You are also wrong about Free Software only being applicable to copyleft software. The list of licenses that the FSF accepts is extensive, and certainly not limited to copyleft licenses.
OK, so if you're being pedantic, you can say that I got it wrong, because the Apple difference does mean that Open Source is a superset of Free Software, but that was an intentional move on my part, because it was bound to catch the attention of people like you who have totally failed to understand that the two terms refer to the same thing (pretty much).
Try looking at the Open Source Definition, the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and the Free Software Foundation's definition of Free Software.
The all require that a license allow people to redistribute the licensed software for profit, without reference to the original copyright holder.
For example, here is clause 1 of the DFSG:
1. Free Redistribution
The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
The YaST License on the other hand specifically prohibits distribution for profit without prior agreement, in clause 3.
YaST is not Free Software. Q.E.D
The Open Source Definition requires the exact same thing in its first clause, so:
Yeah, it's a real shame that they passed the APSL, because otherwise you'd be able to say the two terms were exactly equivalent, rather than having to get into complicated caveats.
I imagine that OSI will comit the same sin, and pass the Real license recently mentioned in TheRegister, since that license seems to have been inspired by the APSL, and has the nasty 12-month forced publication drivel.
since the Open Source Initative was initially set up to market Free Software to corporate types that don't like the F word, but do like the software.
Alternatively, since the Open Source Initiative based their Open Source Definition on the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
In other words, Open Source was always supposed to refer to the same thing as Free Software.
Of course, the Apple license went and screwed things up slightly, because the OSI decided to accept that as Open Source, whereas Debian, and the Free Software Foundation don't like the 12-month pulication upon deployment clause for various reasons. If you ignore that slight wrinkle, FS == OS
UnitedLinux has completed beta testing of the first release of its open source Linux operating system (emphasis mine)
Given that United Linux uses YaST as it's installer, the operating system is dependant up on that non-free (and hence non Open Source) program, which renders the whole thing non-free.
United Linux, like SuSE, is not Free Softwae, so it is not Open Source.
If you switch from 'doze to SuSE, then you're jumping out of the frying pan, into a slightly overheated bath, with someone else controling the temperature.
YaST, and hence SuSE as a whole, is non-free software. Of course Red Hat is drifting that way with their silly trademark games, so I wouldn't recomend them either.
You may say that YaST is almost free, but licenses are more important than many people think. After all, we're not all talking about *BSD taking over from 'doze are we.
Why opt for SuSE's "license-light", when you could give up the non-free license habit entirely?
As stated there, any distribution, including distribution to your business partners, is distribution under the terms of copyright law.
If they've tried to restrict the other partners' redistribution rights, by imposing a GPL-incompatible NDA, then they are in violation of the GPL, and lose all rights to distribute the GPL licensed code in question. That would put them out of business.
Just because it's OSI Approved does not mean that Debian will also conclude that it qualifies as Free, or that Debian will decide that it is practical to distribute it.
Personally, I think the 12 minimum publication of source feature of APSL fails on clause 3 of the DFSG because Apple is imposing an unequal restriction on people modifying their code, because there is no obligation on Apple to publish their modifications for a minimum of 12 months.
Alternatively, one might consider it to fail on clause 5, on the basis that it implicitly discriminates against people that do not have an infrastructure capable of guaranteeing that they will be able to retrieve every version of the code that they've deployed (no matter how briefly, or how limited the deployment) over the last 12 months.
While the DFSG and the OSD are equivalent, that doesn't mean that Debian and the OSI always interpret them similarly.
Debian generally errs on the side of caution, whereas the OSI seems mostly interested in looking good in the press, so lets dubious stuff like the APSL through.
The last word on the APSL on debian-legal concludes that the APSL probably doesn't even qualify for non-free, because of the insistence on a 12 month minimum source publication period, whereas Debian only keeps source for versions of binaries we are currently publishing.
Your price comparison seems to be making the same false assumption that the people who bought their stock seem to have made.
Why do you think that they should be able to charge a comnpany more for a sourceforge installation using proprietary software, than for one using Free Software? Personally, I'd pay less for the proprietary one, because I know it's going to cost me in future license fees, subjects me to vendor tie in, and generally shafts me in the long term, but each to their own, eh?
Surely having sourceforge installed is worth a certain amount to a company, and if you have astute sales people they will extract a decent percentage of that amount.
So the sales team can either convince the customer that the extracted amount needs to be what it is because of some licence certificates that they buy from IBM, or they do it on the basis that setting up sourceforge is quite complicated (which it is) and they are the experts in doing so, because they wrote the code --- I think the arguments are both pretty convincing, so the two resulting amounts are likely to be fairly similar.
If that's the case, are they going to make more money out of installing the Free Software, or out of reselling licenses? (Hint: You get to keep all the money if you go the Free Software route).
Personally, I take the apparent lack of comitment to Free Software as being symptomatic of VA losing the plot. I'm not sure what their business model is supposed to be now, but it seems to have little to do with Free Software, so one wonders how long they'll keep thinking that the publicity from running SourceForge justifies the expense.
Slashdot Mirror
Oops, that should have been "Conference of Presidents" rather than "Council of Ministers" in the first sentence.
;-)
The Conference of Presidents is made up of the President of the Parliament and the chairmen of political groups, so is another group of senior MEPs.
It's the Council of Ministers that's the arena in which the A-items keep not quite getting through, where the government ministers responsible for various departments (i.e. Agriculture & Fisheries) get together, and if there are A-items on their agenda, then they generally get approved without discussion, and so pass onto the second reading before the European Parliament.
Sorry about the confusion -- Acronyms are swimming before my eyes
While JURI (a committee of Members of the European Parliament) and the Council of Ministers have both voted for a restart, the European Commission are still legally allowed to push this through to it's second reading if they manage to put it on an agenda as an A-item.
A-items are a rubber stamping of translations, of previously agreed directives. So far, Poland have been blocking the A-item from getting onto any agendas, but they seem to have finally been nobbled.
Just in time, Denmark have decided to dig their toes in, but if they fold there is still an oportunity to push the directive through.
Of course, flouting the wills of MEPs in this way might be enough to galvanise them into kicking the whole thing out in the second reading, despite the fact that the voting system at that stage is rigged against such an eventuality.
the UK patent office is very aware of the problems that patent abuse can cause
The UKPO speaks with a forked tongue.
They have a history of saying things that mean multiple things, depending on the listener's point of view, and then campaigning strongly behind closed doors to allow unfettered patentability.
The most glaring example of this is their use of "status quo" which one might think meant that they were trying to preserve the current ban on software patents, whereas they actually want to preserve the current practice of the EPO of issuing them, by making that practice legal across the EU.
Your MEP can be found via the new version of FaxYourMP
:-)
As for who to talk to relating to Ag & Fish, you probably want The Secretary of State: Rt. Hon. Margaret Beckett MP, who is available via
Fax: +44 20 7270 8125, which they apparently prefer or failing that, email
Try to be polite
except that apt-geting asterisk will get you a release candidate version (0.9.1+1.0RC1-8) and this news item is about the release of the actual version 1.0.0
There was a version of the Debian package that was labeled as 1.0 a while back, but that was as a result of a versioning cock-up in the asterisk CVS.
At present, you're probably better off grabbing the source and reading the README.
That's right -- I'm running it on a piece of junk that was about to be thrown in a skip by one of my customers --- stick two new & shiny 120GB drives in, with software raid, and make a mondoarchive backup on a CD and you have all the warm & cudly feelings that Ocelot Wreak was after for a cost of about 150 pounds (and that includes the 2 ISDN2 cards bought via eBay, and an FXO card).
:-)
Of course, I'm using a minimal Debian install on it, so it's not got X windows, so no screen saver discomfort
P.S. Asterisk 1.0.0 available from my mirror
I certinly wasn't trying to imply that Sun's employees are daft.
The underlying issue that I have a problem with is the clueless customers, especially the British government at present, who decide that they should adopt an Open Source purchasing policy (on the grounds that it prevents vendor lock-in, say), and then invite Sun to tender JDS, and IBM to tender WebSphere, neither of which qualify.
Even more depressing is when they justify their decision to ignore their own policy on the basis that they need to go with a name they can trust, like Sun or IBM.
Doing that would allow Microsoft to justifiably claim that they'd been excluded for the tender, and then spin that as Open Source being a scam dreamed up by their competitors to unfairly exclude them from tendering for what turn out to be proprietary software sales.
You are missing my point.
Proprietary vendors are perfectly happy to associate themselves with the term Open, and will happily imply that the fact that something is based on Open Standards probably means that it's Open Source, and so eligible for funding under a government Open Source initaitive. This certainly seems to be part of the intent behind MS's adoption of XML for some things.
Those same proprietary vendors are much less likely to be willing to have the word "free" associated with software that they are hoping to license to customers for cash.
I don't think either term is inherently more meaningful to the uninitiated, but at least the one with Free in it is less likely to be hijacked by band-wagon-jumping businesses.
Hm, Sun's Java runtime == Open Source? I think not.
StarOffice == Open Source? I think not.
If we'd stuck to calling Free Software, Free Software, we wouldn't have to put up with this nonsense, but as it is we have a situation where people are in the throws of defining new government policy in the UK stating that the default purchasing policy in the UK should include "Open Source" software, despite the fact that nobody involved seems to have any clear idea what Open Source means.
That allows Sun to come in and say something like "StarOffice is Open Source becasue you get to see some of the source" and the NHS folks presumably say "Fair enough, where do we sign for a site license?"
I'm surprised Microsoft don't go totally ape about this, but then again, they probably think that JDS is open source too. It wouldn't surprise me if the Sun sales folks think that it's Open Source, in the same way that most SUSE sales folks used to think that SuSE was Open Source, despite the old YaST license.
As reported on the BBC, this killed their mapping systems, forcing them to revert to the paper maps that they've always used in the past.
No safety critical systems were involved.
Just because you get the source, is not sufficient to qualify as Open Source.
The Open Source Definition is effectively the same document as the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and as such both have conditions that require that the software be alowed to be redistributed, even if modified or aggregated:
If your not careful, you may find that the client can claim that since they comisioned the work, it is what is known as a "work for hire", which would (as I understand it, IANAL) mean that they own the copyright, not you.
One way to avoid this, without the need to hire expensive lawyers, is to ensure that neither of you own exclusive copyright --- how do you manage that? By ensuring that you use some code that is GPLed by other people, so that the final work is bound to be GPLed as well.
Then, as long as you get the clients permission to have a copy of the code at your site, even if they try to claim copyright on the work you wrote for them, you can claim your GPL granted rights on the code they distributed to you, so at least you don't end up with nothing.
The only question you need to ask yourself then is: "Is the client wanting to get into the software industry?". If the answer to that is "No" then chances are they will not be tempted to redistribute the GPLed code that they have, becuase they're busy doing whatever it is that they actually make money at. If that is the case, then after this deal, you still have the only copy of the code that is practically available to the world, so you still get to make money out of it.
Even if one of your subesequent clients does redistribute the GPLed code, you are still the experts in that code, so unless you're doing a spectacularly poor job of supporting it, you'll still get the calls, so could find that your business is actually increased by this.
Also, people deploying your code in new situations, without being your customers, is actually to your benefit, becasue they are likely to find bugs for you, which you are not obliged to fix, but which you could offer to fix for money. You then get to update your paying customers before they are bitten by that bug, which is likely to keep them cheerful.
10 Years is a long time.
;-)
I sold my first commercial support for a GNU/Linux system almost 9 years ago:
http://www.hands.com/100005.png
If they still wanted me to support the versions of software that were installed on those machines, I would, but as it happens in that period they've upgraded from slackware (0.99?? kernel) to Debian all the way through to 3.0.
They've also been privatised and split into three separate companies, two of which still use the grandchildren of these first systems, for which I still provide support.
So, while a national institution like British Coal is now history, we're still around, and still willing to support any version of software our clients wish to use.
Tell me a single proprietary vendor who would make the same claim (about historical support), and I'll send you a cookie
Also, when you phone us, like most Free Software firms, you get to talk to someone that actually knows things.
Call a proprietary vendors support line and you'll generally get to talk to some poor sod who is living the nightmare of a call centre, reading pointless scripts at angry customers. This does not generally do much for your inner harmony, and it almost never fixes the problem.
Who (besides RMS) ever said that costless, non-open software was bad?
If you read what I wrote, you'll see that I certainly didn't in the post you're replying to. All I was doing was pointing out that UL is not Open Source, and that the story has that wrong.
I suppose I've always valued liberty over equality,
Well, I tend to favour Free Software, because I'm rather protective of my liberty, and can do without being tied into a supplier in a way that stops me doing what I want to the software on my computers --- You want the freedom to discard you freedom, I want to make sure that people are aware that they are discarding their freedom when they do so. I think we're on the same side here.
Wrong.
Open Source is defined by the Open Source Definition, which is a very slight modification to the Debian Free Software Guidelines, so they were always intended to be equivalent terms.
Unfortunately the Open Source Initiative, in their wisdom accepted that Apple License that both Debian and the Free Software Foundation rejected, but that is a tiny thing.
Getting the source is nowhere near sufficient to qualify for "Open Source" status.
You are also wrong about Free Software only being applicable to copyleft software. The list of licenses that the FSF accepts is extensive, and certainly not limited to copyleft licenses.
OK, so if you're being pedantic, you can say that I got it wrong, because the Apple difference does mean that Open Source is a superset of Free Software, but that was an intentional move on my part, because it was bound to catch the attention of people like you who have totally failed to understand that the two terms refer to the same thing (pretty much).
The all require that a license allow people to redistribute the licensed software for profit, without reference to the original copyright holder.
For example, here is clause 1 of the DFSG:
The YaST License on the other hand specifically prohibits distribution for profit without prior agreement, in clause 3.
YaST is not Free Software. Q.E.D
The Open Source Definition requires the exact same thing in its first clause, so:
YaST is not Open Source. Q.E.D.
Yeah, it's a real shame that they passed the APSL, because otherwise you'd be able to say the two terms were exactly equivalent, rather than having to get into complicated caveats.
I imagine that OSI will comit the same sin, and pass the Real license recently mentioned in TheRegister, since that license seems to have been inspired by the APSL, and has the nasty 12-month forced publication drivel.
So which part of the Open Source Definition allows software that is barred by the Debian Free Software Guidelines, or vice versa?
(Hint: they're practiaclly word for word the same document, with a little editing done by the OSI since they based their definition on Debian's)
Since when does free software == open source?
since the Open Source Initative was initially set up to market Free Software to corporate types that don't like the F word, but do like the software.
Alternatively, since the Open Source Initiative based their Open Source Definition on the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
In other words, Open Source was always supposed to refer to the same thing as Free Software.
Of course, the Apple license went and screwed things up slightly, because the OSI decided to accept that as Open Source, whereas Debian, and the Free Software Foundation don't like the 12-month pulication upon deployment clause for various reasons. If you ignore that slight wrinkle, FS == OS
Either way, YaST isn't either of those things.
UnitedLinux has completed beta testing of the first release of its open source Linux operating system
(emphasis mine)
Given that United Linux uses YaST as it's installer, the operating system is dependant up on that non-free (and hence non Open Source) program, which renders the whole thing non-free.
United Linux, like SuSE, is not Free Softwae, so it is not Open Source.
If you switch from 'doze to SuSE, then you're jumping out of the frying pan, into a slightly overheated bath, with someone else controling the temperature.
YaST, and hence SuSE as a whole, is non-free software. Of course Red Hat is drifting that way with their silly trademark games, so I wouldn't recomend them either.
You may say that YaST is almost free, but licenses are more important than many people think. After all, we're not all talking about *BSD taking over from 'doze are we.
Why opt for SuSE's "license-light", when you could give up the non-free license habit entirely?
Try reading the article.
As stated there, any distribution, including distribution to your business partners, is distribution under the terms of copyright law.
If they've tried to restrict the other partners' redistribution rights, by imposing a GPL-incompatible NDA, then they are in violation of the GPL, and lose all rights to distribute the GPL licensed code in question.
That would put them out of business.
Just because it's OSI Approved does not mean that Debian will also conclude that it qualifies as Free, or that Debian will decide that it is practical to distribute it.
Personally, I think the 12 minimum publication of source feature of APSL fails on clause 3 of the DFSG because Apple is imposing an unequal restriction on people modifying their code, because there is no obligation on Apple to publish their modifications for a minimum of 12 months.
Alternatively, one might consider it to fail on clause 5, on the basis that it implicitly discriminates against people that do not have an infrastructure capable of guaranteeing that they will be able to retrieve every version of the code that they've deployed (no matter how briefly, or how limited the deployment) over the last 12 months.
While the DFSG and the OSD are equivalent, that doesn't mean that Debian and the OSI always interpret them similarly.
Debian generally errs on the side of caution, whereas the OSI seems mostly interested in looking good in the press, so lets dubious stuff like the APSL through.
The last word on the APSL on debian-legal concludes that the APSL probably doesn't even qualify for non-free, because of the insistence on a 12 month minimum source publication period, whereas Debian only keeps source for versions of binaries we are currently publishing.
Your price comparison seems to be making the same false assumption that the people who bought their stock seem to have made.
Why do you think that they should be able to charge a comnpany more for a sourceforge installation using proprietary software, than for one using Free Software? Personally, I'd pay less for the proprietary one, because I know it's going to cost me in future license fees, subjects me to vendor tie in, and generally shafts me in the long term, but each to their own, eh?
Surely having sourceforge installed is worth a certain amount to a company, and if you have astute sales people they will extract a decent percentage of that amount.
So the sales team can either convince the customer that the extracted amount needs to be what it is because of some licence certificates that they buy from IBM, or they do it on the basis that setting up sourceforge is quite complicated (which it is) and they are the experts in doing so, because they wrote the code --- I think the arguments are both pretty convincing, so the two resulting amounts are likely to be fairly similar.
If that's the case, are they going to make more money out of installing the Free Software, or out of reselling licenses? (Hint: You get to keep all the money if you go the Free Software route).
Personally, I take the apparent lack of comitment to Free Software as being symptomatic of VA losing the plot. I'm not sure what their business model is supposed to be now, but it seems to have little to do with Free Software, so one wonders how long they'll keep thinking that the publicity from running SourceForge justifies the expense.