On Mon, 2009-03-09 at 08:37 -0400, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
I'm puzzled - you say it is FUD; but then you seem to agree with him. How is it FUD?
The implication is that the OSI is not interested in software freedom because it disagrees with the FSF on one corner-case. This is historically and factually inaccurate.
This "corner case" is clear cut, the NASA Open Source agreement requires any contribution to be "original", one cannot take bits and bobs from another project and incopreate it into a NASA Open Source licensed project.
The GNU GPL also prevents some free software to be used.
This is clearly a non-free license, since it violates freedom 3, "the freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.".
No, while I tend to agree with the FSF views, this is clearly just political agenda. The NASA license is *bad* but it is clearly *free software*, you have all the freedoms you have with the GPL, it's just that the compatibility list is an empty set.
The OSI disagrees with this freedom, and have decided to list a license that is not a free software license amongst its approved licenses.
No the OSI has been realistic this time. The OSI was wrong in accepting the original Apple License for example, but the NASA license is just stupid, but yet a free software license.
If I were OSI I wouldn't have approved it on political grounds (it's useless as it creates a niche of free software that cannot be shared with other projects), but certainly not under the definition of free software.
I fail to see what is historically inaccureate, or factually incorrect. The OSI has listed, and lists licenses that do not adher to the four freedoms of software, the only conclusion is that they do not care about software freedom.
You are just being unreasonably zealot, but that's as usual.
It's a pity that people have to keep doing damage control every time you write in public tho...
Simo.