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On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, wilson wrote:
> This is Open source ....! we r talking of FREE things..& IIT is selling
Do you know what the term 'Free Software' means? Do you know that it is
not the same as 'Opensource'?
Here are the facts:
1. GNU, the FSF and the GPL were started by Richard M Stallman in 1981 or
around then.
Free software refers to the freedom (four freedoms) that comes with the
software, not the price of the software. You are allowed to charge
anything you want for the software as long as the source code is made
available at no _extra_ charge, except a reasonable copying fee (media,
electricity etc).
Note the term 'extra'. If the software is given away free, the source
code must be given with it, or made available via ftp or some other
method.
If the software is sold, then ownership of the software entitles a user to
have the source code for free. If one has not bought the software, then
one is not entitled to the source for free. A prerequisite for getting
the source free is that you have legally obtained a licence for the
software. The licence may have been at no charge, or at some fixed (or
variable even) charge. You *must* pay what is required.
Redhat and other commercial distributions (all the biggies except
Debian) charge for the shrink-wrapped packaging and the support agreement
that comes with it. They do not charge for the software on the
distro. SuSE uses a proprietary configuration utility that does not come
with the source. People still use it, they are just not free to customise
it.
2. The Open Source Software movement was stated by Eric S Raymond in the
early to mid '90s. It was created to avoid ambiguity in the GPL. Most
people confused the difference between free speech and free beer. The
term opensource tries to prevent that by specifying that only the source
should be kept open. It makes no mention of costing, and ESR specifically
mentions that there is nothing wrong in charging for software.
3. Why source should be open.
Keeping the source open means that others can benefit from what you have
built by using sections of your code in their tools. They may also extend
your system. The advantages to you are obvious. Your code gets much more
publicity and usage, and you become famous in the hacker
community. That's what you were after in the first place, wasn't it?
4. When source should be closed.
There are cases when your source should be kept closed. Take the case of
Doom. When it first came out, it was a really kick-ass game. Amazingly
fast vector graphics on a 386. Let's see you do that today - on a
386. This was obviously the USP of Doom. The ideas used were not easy to
come by, and would not have occurred to anyone at all. ID worked hard to
get the performance that they did, and had every right to keep it a secret
while it was hot. As we all know, they released the source for Doom when
the technology had cooled down a bit.
5. Why to charge for software, and why not to charge.
This question really translates to a couple of other questions.
a. Is the concept of your software so radical that you and only you could
have thought of it?
b. Did you have to do an amazing amount of research to develop the coding
methods you used?
c. Did you use all your own code or was much of it obtained from outside?
d. Did you pay for outside help?
e. How many people are going to benefit from your code?
f. Are these the same people who write code that you benefit from?
I think most intelligent people will be able to find the answers they need
in there. By the way, if you answered Yes to b, then you weren't paying
too much attention while learning to code (I expect a controversy here).
Hope this has helped people understand. I've certainly figured out a few
things in writing this. Will soon be on my website.
Philip
--
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http://www.ncst.ernet.in/~philip/
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