On 12/5/07, SJS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've found that a lot of people who aren't terribly interested in the > open-source community treat "public domain", "freeware", "shareware", > and "open source" as synonyms. > > Some of them are astonished at the idea that they aren't synonyms, and > a bit disbelieving. >
I run into this everyday. There are numerous government departmental manuals that discourage the use of most of the FOSS software products, because they don't differentiate between these. I find it funny, especially since a significant number of public domain software products have started in government. Strangely the admin types get it, and the developers don't. The very people who would lose their mind if their code were misappropriated by someone else, don't get the difference between FOSS, PD, freeware, and shareware. They figure it is free, so they can do whatever they want with it. -- JD Runyan -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
