Re: [Ogf-l] "Shared-Source"

[Margaret Vining]

This is an important debate for me.  Personally, I don't think "shared-source" has a snowball's chance unless people buy into Microsoft's semantics.  (But that seems about as useful as giving a dead person the name of someone who is living in order to resurrect them.)  Under normal circumstances the IRS' definition of "competitive" is fairly straightforward.  But open licenses and improvements in information distribution are redefining what makes a corporate entity financially successful.  Microsoft has two choices: die or farm.   In this new model, the existence of a nonprofit company like GNU is clearly competing with a for-profit company, Microsoft.  If you go by the old school definition of "competition" then GNU clearly does not compete with Microsoft.  But GNU does compete with Microsoft because they have changed the business paradigm.  The old paradigm involved a great deal of corporate control over the expression of an idea.  In open source business, it looks like control of an idea no longer has anything to do with long-term success.  Financial success now becomes an issue of _farming_ the open source by contribution and innovative utilization.   I wonder what kind of steps the IRS will take toward redefining nonprofit organizations that exist in open source arenas.  Until they do, nonprofit companies will able to compete with for profit companies and at an unfair advantage.  I'm just praying that the IRS agent assigned to my exemption application doesn't read up on computing news.   ; ), Maggie Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com