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RE: [uug] Open Source vs. Closed Source software

Gary Thornock
Fri, 25 Mar 2005 08:22:17 -0800

My position tends to be on the pragmatic side: use software that
works.  RMS wrote about the philosophical difference between Open
Source and Free Software.  In his view, Open Source is about the
purely pragmatic notion of creating better software, while Free
Software is about Freedom.  If that's the case, then I lean more
toward Open Source.

Of course, it's not just a two-sided discussion.  Where Stallman has
his "Free as in beer" vs. "Free as in speech" rhetoric, the BSD world
has "Free as in free", and, of course, the commercial world has "Not
free".

For my own purposes, I use a variety of licenses.  If I'm contributing
to an established project, then, of course, the code falls under the
existing license of the project.  Were I to start an open source
project of my own, I'd probably go with a BSD license, but I can
easily imagine cases where I'd do commercial software, too.  It
depends on the project.

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