On Wed, 29 May 2002, Kevin McDermott wrote: > http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhl_7-3_personal_us.html?location=United+Kingdom&; > .THE SOFTWARE PROGRAMS, INCLUDING SOURCE CODE, DOCUMENTATION, > APPEARANCE, STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION, ARE PROPRIETARY PRODUCTS OF RED > HAT, INC..
Oh Come on, Kevin ... that's FUD. What it actually says is: ...ARE PROPRIETARY PRODUCTS OF RED HAT, INC. AND OTHERS AND ARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT ... So they acknowledge that some (in fact most) of the code is owned by someone else. IANAL, but I suspect "proprietary", in this context, means "not public domain". Open-source software is most definitely not public-domain, so the sentence is correct. > http://www.redhat.com/docs/glossary/ > .open-source > Non-proprietary software that is not controlled by any one manufacturer. > Open-source software code is available and can be adpated by users to > suit their needs.. This is just about correct, but its not obvious. The "not controlled by any one manufacturer" means that I must be able to distribute a copy of the program to my friends, but it doesn't say that explicitly. Compare with MS's Shared Source (or whatever they call it) project. Its this "controlled by one manufacturer" clause that rules out MS's license. > http://www.europe.redhat.com/news/article/202.html > > .Open source software is continuing to establish its presence in new > markets, and developers in particular are realising the clear benefits > of a non-proprietary platform. This statement is also correct, but in a FSF/GNU definition of "proprietary". The phrase "closed-source" would have been more clear, IMO. Basically, the legal profession is still emerging into the 21 century. They still have the idea that either someone owns something (so its proprietary and can't be copied), or its public domain (nobody owns it). Because reality doesn't reflect this anymore (c.f. OpenSource software), you are left with this dichotomy, where software is both proprietary and non-proprietary. Actually, this mind-set runs deeper that just the legal profession (which is pretty deep), and reflects that most people haven't realised the consequences of the Internet ... but I digress. > Proprietary software's better than non-proprietary software, when it's > made by RH :) Well, obviously ;^) Paul. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Particle Physics (Theory & Experimental) Groups Paul Millar Department of Physics and Astronomy [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Glasgow [EMAIL PROTECTED] Glasgow, G12 8QQ, Scotland http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/paulm +44 (0)141 330 4717 A54C A9FC 6A77 1664 2E4E 90E3 FFD2 704B BF0F 03E9 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.lug.org.uk http://www.linuxportal.co.uk http://www.linuxjob.co.uk http://www.linuxshop.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------
