On Friday 12 December 2003 01:06, Oded Arbel wrote: > On Thursday 11 December 2003 22:31, Oron Peled wrote: > > The distinction you refer too is between the two ideologies (about *why* > > this software is needed). The software itself is practically the same as > > both the open source definition and the free software definition gives > > the same rights. > > Not exactly. you seem to refer to GNU's notion of open source, a notion > I did not mention. Open Source is software that has the source available > (freely or for a charge) but it does not infer that the software itself is > free.
1. I refer to the definition of the people who coined the term Open Source (ESR, Linus, etc.) it is stated clearly in the Open Source Definition. 2. Having source without rights to use it in meaningfull ways (redistribute, modify, derived works etc.) is useless (unless you don't care about other people rights). 3. There are many companies that tries to blur that sharp line. Tzafrir has already mentioned Microsoft "Shared Source" (mine is mine and yours is mine as well :-), but even Sun had its part in this confusion (the Java platform "Sun Community License") -- they are willing to give you the source (free of charge), but with a license that does not give you any rights. We should all be very clear about what is OSS or Free and not let companies "pollute" these terms and mix them with "free" (of charge) or to make them like "Hanuka candles" type of open source (you can watch them, but not allowed to really use them). -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron "Normal people ... believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features ... yet." -- Scott Adams ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
