On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:31 AM, Jean-Marc (M2i3.com) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Well the major distinction between a website and a local application > is precisely that... where it runs. > > Lets take OpenOffice... > > You download a copy and run it on your machine. > You can choose to alter your copy and be the sole user of those > changes > You can publish your changes and once approved/merged into the trunk > version, other people can benefit from it. > ** The benefit of the improvements made takes a longer time (if ever) > to reach the potential users. > > Lets take Joomla... > > You download a copy and run it on your webserver > You can choose to alter your copy > You can publish your changes but there again people will need to > update their own copy. > ** The benefit of the improvements made still takes a longer time (if > ever) to reach the potential users. > > Lets take teachmate.org and reddit.com... > > You don't download anything unless you want to change it (or branch > and start your own) > Whoever have their published changes approved updates the final > website directly. > ** The benefit of the improvements reaches all the users upon > approval. > > Lets imagine Google was doing it where you could download the source > code of their website and suggest improvements to any aspect of it > where the whole user base of Google would benefit from the changes. > > > The distinction is probably too thin to justify a new term... "Open > Source Website" already says enough. But new terms also carry with > them loads of meaning and in the case of Reddit and Teachmate the > meaning is: "the website, it's behavior and all aspects of it belongs > to the community an is actively maintained by the community".
I think the key takeaway is that the term "open source" has nothing to do with where the code actually runs (see disclaimer below). It has to do with who has access to the code and what they can do with the code. By opening up the source code according to most OSS licenses, it's perfectly valid to take the code, rebrand the site and start a competitor site- just like there have been forks of traditional software (Emacs vs. XEmacs for example). * Disclaimer: Depending on the license used I may not even have to redistribute the changes I make to my competitor site (BSD, Artistic and GPLv2 for example). Of course some licenses have special clauses for "web delivered applications". So yes, where it runs is a factor in the "redistribution" clause, but most OSS licenses don't force you to share code changes for web applications. -- Aaron Turner http://synfin.net/ http://tcpreplay.synfin.net/ - Pcap editing and replay tools for Unix & Windows They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
