OSI compliance requiring software to be "free beer"?

[Ben Tilly]

Several points.

1) You are seriously misrepresenting what was said.
2) It has been made very clear to you that you will not get
   approval.
3) In all likelyhood you are charging someone money for the
   time spent wasting our bandwidth.  This is the most
   likely explanation for your continued idiotic obstinance.
   At this point you are wasting money and generating bad
   feelings towards Intradat.  You should stop and consider
   whether continuing to damage your client's interests is
   wise.

Regards,
Ben

Manfred Schmid <mschmid at intradat.com> wrote:
>
>Dear Board Members:
>
>I follow up on the discussions on license-discuss at opensource.org
>concerning our IPL / Developer Program Model.
>
>We know, that up to now Open Source Software has been free both in the
>meaning of "free speech" and "free beer". We want to introduce a model
>that guarantees free speech but takes the free beer aspect away.
>
>Under certain conditions, IPL requires you to pay the prices according
>to our price list, if you want to use IPLed software.
>
>Within the discussion it turned out, that most participants argued, Open
>Source Software has to be free in the sense of "free beer", i.e.
>requiring the user to pay license fees will be a no-go for OSI approval.
>
>We have not found any such restriction being officially published.
>
>We do not want to change the definition of Open Source, nor do we want
>to correct GPL etc. For us, Open Source covers a continuum defined by
>freedom, competition and the availability, changeability and
>distribution of Source Code.
>
>We think, Open Source as a term should cover all the already OSI
>approved licenses (free source) as well as IPL like models.
>
>I hereby request an official Board statement: Does OSI approval of
>licenses require the software to be free in the sense of "free beer"?
>
>Manfred Schmid
>
>--
>
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>intraDAT AG
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