> > Ugh? Please don't judge a book by its title. Code Reading is a > > technical, not philosophical book. It contains numerous examples, from > > NetBSD, Apache, Perl, XFree86, etc... > > Freedom is a question of ethics for me, not of mere pragmatism. The > "Open Source" concept is the pretension that freedom is merely a practical > issue, hence it reduces it to the technical ground. > > > Diomidis stopped short of using > > the term "Free Software Perspective", because not every example is > > GPLed. But as far as code reading skills are concerned, BSD-style > > Licenses or Artistic are just as fine as GPL: they don't matter > > w.r.t. understanding code. > > BSD-style licensed software is still free software (untill it's hoarded > and becomes propietary, of course), which is the point of it. The fact > that the parents of the free software movement have the GPL as their > license of choice doesn't mean that only GPLed software is free.
Sorry, I don't agree here. BSD-style licenses grant users _and_ developers alike freedom to use the source as they see fit. This qualifies BSD-licensed software as "free software", but not as "Free Software". The latter term has the precise meaning of: "[L]GPLed software". I'm sure that a lot of people in the FSF/GNU culture would vehemently protest if Diomidis (who, being a hacker, knows very well the difference) used "Free Software" in his title, but examples from BSD-licensed software in his book. "Open Source Software" is not the best way to characterize BSD-style software either. Many companies disclose their source code, thus releasing "open source", but impose an inacceptable amount of restrictions to users in their licenses. I don't feel comfortable to have truly liberal licenses like BSD or Artistic (or variants thereof) associated with "Open Source". Unfortunatly, this is common practice. Perhaps we should coin a new term for BSD-licensed software, e.g. "Free++ Software"? ;-) [or "Free-- Software", depending on where you're standing] > > Again, this is not a book on Open Source vs. Free Software. It is a > > book on reading and understanding code, not only from small projects, > > but also very big ones as you can see. > > Then "The Open Source Perspective" is probably not the best title for > such a book either. Ack. -- Farid Hajji. http://www.farid-hajji.net/address.html
