I think that people might be being a little hard on the term 'Open Source'. As I understand the history of it, it was a term of art devised by people like Raymond, Perens, etc. to replace Stallman's prefered 'Free Software' (which was deemed to have the wrong connotations for businessmen). Since this group of developers coined the term in the first place, or at least brought it into popular use, we might agree to allow them some authority in its usage. Especially since the words 'open source' really don't have any clear *literal* meaning (pace Jay Blanchard, who claimed that there was a 'bone-headed mistake' in the definition).
It is possible to pick out various strands to the open source model; having to do not just with the copyright arrangements, but also with software development and business processes. And like any term of art which was devised primarily for PR reasons (eg: '.NET', 'New Labour'), it represents these strands in a vague way. But I don't think that this is any reason to redefine it to mean simply software which is distributed with the source code (or some more exact definition along these lines). Perhaps people might want to use 'Shared Source' for this latter kind of idea, along with Microsoft: <quote>Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative is a source licensing framework that makes source code broadly available while preserving the intellectual property rights that sustain a strong software business</quote> Of course, this definition exposes Microsoft's background assumption that selling software is always necessary for software businesses. But (to respond to Tony Leotta's posting) I think that part of the Open Source idea is that there is a business model involved in selling services around a product instead of selling the product itself. I gues the thought is that making a piece of software open source radically increases its exposure both to users and to developers. The latter then help to improve the quality of software, and the former pay you for integrators, consultants, etc. More to say here, of course, but this isn't an obviously dumb idea, is it? Best, Ewan Ewan McEachran Softsteel Solutions Ltd. -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
