On Tue, 2006-11-21 at 18:16 -1000, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote: > Jim Thompson wrote: > > The "term" Open Source was a marketing campaign, promulgated by Eric > > Raymond, > What's wrong with a marketing campaign? The more the merrier. > > If I can live comfortably on donations, I wouldn't mind insisting that > every piece of software to "free", whatever that means. Wayne
The problem is that "Open Source" is a muddied definition. All it really focuses on is the development model and hence access to the source code. The term "free" too is a muddied term in the English language as many hear and think free as in $0. The Free Software (http://www.gnu.org/) movement however stands for freedom in terms of liberty, not price. As a result, an "Open Source" person can look at things without considering freedom. Proprietary software companies build of the term "Open Source" and tackle the issue in terms of convenience or cost. For example, Xen virtualization comes along as Free Software. VMWare then responds by putting out a version of their product, VMware Server, as $0. Microsoft does the same and releases Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 as $0. Are you then inclined to use either VMWare or Virtual PC? A Free Software person considers freedoms of the user and therefore opposes DRM. "Open Source" only cares if the program used to propagate DRM is "Open Sourced". ~ Julian _______________________________________________ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
