would someone kindly clarify this paragaph, please (RH business model)

Mike A. Harris mharris at redhat.com
Mon Oct 27 08:01:54 UTC 2003


On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, Robert P. J. Day wrote:

>> The truth of the matter is, that open source software is ALWAYS 
>> "free" in any definition of the word.  Even when you *pay* for 
>> OSS, you have the option of obtaining it at no cost via download 
>> if you desire in source code form at a bare minimum.
>...
>
>say what?  i'm not convinced.  what if i start a company and write
>a completely proprietary piece of software, with license fees and
>per-seat restrictions and everything?  i might decide, for better
>or worse, to open source that product, and yet it would still be
>proprietary and non-free.

Wrong.  That is not open source.  That is "source code
available", like pine or qmail or something else.  The definition 
of "open source" is software under a license that is approved by 
OSI, of which the appropriate licenses are located at:

	http://www.opensource.org

You may very well release the source code for your software 
however you see fit, and under whatever license you choose.  It 
is not however "open source" unless it uses one of the licenses 
listed on the OSI website, or unless you get OSI to approve your 
license as an open source license.

You and/or others may call your source "open source" in slang 
since the source code is available, but that does NOT make it 
open source by definition.

Source code which is true open source under an OSI approved 
license, is specifically what I am talking about, and what anyone 
is talking about when they say "open source" unless they don't 
have a clue what that term officially means.


>for that matter, microsoft might decide to open source its entire
>office suite.  but it still wouldn't be free.  so can you clarify
>what you wrote above?

And if Microsoft puts it under an "open source" license, then it 
would very much be open source software with complete freedom 
that any other open source software such as the Linux kernel 
shares.  It would be free in every sense of the word.  If 
Microsoft releases their source code under any license that is 
not approved by the OSI, then by definition - it is not open 
source, and your argument means absolutely nothing.


-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat





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