Everyone breath for a second. My understanding of David's original post was to assert that "open" and "free" were meaningless distinctions. because of Adam Smith's notion of Invisible Hand, it didn't matter where you start, you end up at effectively the same end point. Therfore there is no need to divide the community into factions.
What then flamed up was a debate that basically highlighted the very rift that David spoke of. The question is whether "open" and "free" are effectively meaningless distinctions. >From a legal standpoint, I think they are meaningless. But not because of any invisible hand coming in and mucking up the works. You cannot create a license that says "this work shall be open" or "this work shall be free" and have it have any concrete meaning in court. At least not in the sense of "free" or "open" we're talking about. The only distinction that has any real world effect is the wording of the license, the rights granted to the world by the copyright holder. anything else has little real meaning. Greg -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3