What I see are plans to release something or another (various patches
and enhancements? new modules? the whole thing?) under the name
"OpenVistA". That makes little sense, given that VistA was originally
built by VA employees long before WorldVistA or Hardhats.org even
existed. The GPL just doesn't work backwards: If you build an
application using an existing library and then decide to make that
application open source, the library doesn't become open source, too.
I'm sure that's not what was intended, but the very name OpenvistA does
give the impression that the existing infrastructure is somehow being
absorbed into another product. If I decided to create my own web server
starting from the Apache code base, adding some additional facilities
and install scripts along the way, would it be right for me to call it
OpenApache? I'm sure none of us think it would, but so far as I can
tell, the difference is that Apache is released under an open source
license, but the VistA source was obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA).
====
Gregory Woodhouse
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Apr 24, 2005, at 6:06 PM, Nancy Anthracite wrote:
I think there is a distinction being made between varieties of open
source. I
don't think anyone is trying to say that public domain isn't open
source.
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