Objective of IFSO Re: [Fsfe-ie] stuff from the past week [adelaney at cs.may.ie]
David Golden
david at oldr.net
Fri Oct 31 21:23:49 CET 2003
On Fri 31 Oct 2003 19:18, Philip Reynolds wrote:
> The term "open source" is ambiguous enough, because one could
> believe that the source is completely open and viewable to anybody
> or the source is open for the intended recipient (i.e. the
> purchaser).
>
"Open Source" (note capitals) is quite well defined by the OSI Definition or
DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidlines), at this stage, despite Microsoftie
attempts to dilute the term.
* Open Source Initiative, not the Ottowa Swine Institute...
> Obviously in the case of a commercial entity trying to sell the
> software, the latter is the intended meaning.
>
> Is the latter really proprietary software?
Yes. It was always called source-available-proprietary (SAP) back in my day
among computer-literate engineers, it was a common way of shipping
computational fluid dynamics or finite element analysis codes for compilation
on high-end unix, for example.
Note also that legally speaking, it is becoming quite important to be clear
that GPL software is proprietary too - it is "owned" by the copyright holder
and licensed under the GPL, so it still has a proprietor. It is emphatically
not "Public Domain", despite SCO's incoherent rantings.
Saying it is non-proprietary might still give roughly the right impression to
programmers and most normal humans, but it is entirely the wrong idea to give
to lawyers.
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