License Counseling

[John Cowan]

Greg Herlein scripsit:

> This cuts to the chase of a lot of the arguments among the open
> source and free software people lately.  I think you
> mis-spoke:  it may not be considered "Free Software" but it most
> certainly is open source.

I may be in error, but I did not misspeak.

> Fundamentallyu, if Daniel wants to release his code and/or docs
> under the license he described, then he should be able to IMHO.

Of course.  He just can't [*] call his license either (IMHO) Open Source
or Free.

> If the conditions are too burdensome for the distributions then
> they don't have to include it.  They have the choice - they do
> not have to include it, any more than he has to license it in
> such a way that they can include it more easily.

Same story with Internet Exploder: it is freely redistributable
unchanged in binary form.  It is not Open Source nor Free.
A distro could include it if it wanted to (say a Mac distro)
nevertheless.

> Why should Daniel be pushed to release under a license other than
> what he wants?  If it's his copyright (and/or he has releases
> from contributors) then let him do what he wants - it's his to
> make that decision.

He wanted to release under an OSI certified license that does
what he wants.  That is self-contradictory.

-- 
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan at ccil.org
Please leave your values        |       Check your assumptions.  In fact,
   at the front desk.           |          check your assumptions at the door.
     --sign in Paris hotel      |            --Miles Vorkosigan