RFC soon on essay "Does Free Software Production in a Bazaar obey the Law of Diminishing Returns?"

Richard Stallman rms at gnu.org
Sun Aug 22 09:17:26 UTC 1999


      I am much more concerned about the fact that Open Source accepts
    an increasing variety of licenses

Actually there is just a small difference between the set of licenses
that are defined as open source and the set that we define as free
software.  There is only one known case where we disagree, and that is
the Apple license.

In particular, the QPL does fit our definition of free software, as
well as the definition of open source.  See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.

I agree with you that the QPL has major drawbacks as a free software
license, and I agree that the proliferation of corporate licenses
since 1998 is bad for the community.  But I don't think that Free
Software and Open Source really disagree very much here.




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