[OS:N:] RE: N:] FYI: Rep. David Wu on open source

[Christine <cfw1 sluug org>]

As additional information that our representatives should be following (and 
others.)

Check out non award RFP of interest:
http://www.disa.mil/pao/opensource.html

It discusses how the DoD finds the GPL more useful than the MIT_EULA 
(Mobile Internet Toolkit EULA.) -- > > 
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/eula_mit.htm)
NOTE:
> This page returns 404 for many browsers or the page was pulled (I 
couldn't find it in I.E. 5.5 either.) someone said it did work fine in 
Konqeror. Doesn't seem to work in IE 5.0 or Mozilla 1.01 on Win2k.

In general laymen terms:
(an quick synopsis/interpretation of the "DoD Q&A on Use of Open Source 
Software"):
We're the US Government. Software we develop, is in some sense "owned" by 
the people - the taxpayers. e.g. DARPA and the NCSA web server. The MMIT 
license prevents us from 1) letting anyone else *see* our source code, 2) 
letting anyone else *use* our source code, or 3) *give* anyone else our 
source code.

In that sense it "captures" or binds you to specific terms and/or actions. 
 The GPL does too, in that if you use GPL code, then if you distribute 
binaries or code you derive from the GPL code, you must give the source 
code also.

What they're saying is that meeting the GPL conditions is a minor issue, 
compared to the problems with meeting the MMIT license conditions.

Happy reading!

--christine

-----Original Message-----
From:	Kym Buchanan [SMTP:buchanak nwrel org]
Sent:	Wednesday, November 20, 2002 1:32 PM
To:	Osn (E-mail)
Subject:	[OS:N:] FYI: Rep. David Wu on open source

I'm pleased to call David Wu my representative. I recently contacted him
about open source software. His response offers no suprises, but at least
Rep. Wu (or his staff) has the gist. An excerpt: