On 4/25/17 7:36 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
On Tue, 25 Apr 2017 15:10:28 -0700
Rick Moen <[email protected]> wrote:
Quoting Bruce Perens ([email protected]):
There isn't a licensing difference between Free Software, Open
Source, and DFSG-compliant.
Of course there are differences:
Free Software means just that: You don't have to pay anything to use
it. There's all kinds of stuff out there where object code is free to
download and use, but source is not available. (And there are degrees
of Free - such as "free for non-commercial use only."
Open Source means that the code is available. It DOESN'T mean that you
have a license to do anything with it. There's quite a bit of open
source code that requires a license to use. A lot of SDKs fall into
this category. For that matter, when it comes to documentation -
arguably, it's inherently open source - but that doesn't mean you can
freely copy it and distribute it.
Any particular license defines a specific set of terms of use, which may
or may not have some degree of freeness, may or may not involve open
source consideration (e.g., copyleft, requiring that source be
redistributed).
DFSG-compliant means that the terms of a license meet a specific set of
criteria set by the Debian Project - which later became the basis for
certification by the Open Source Initiative. It happens that they
pretty much define FOSS (Free AND Open Source).
Miles Fidelman
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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