OSD#5 needs a patch?

Chuck Swiger chuck at codefab.com
Thu Oct 9 05:00:44 UTC 2003


Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:
[ ... ]
> Proponents of open source software insist that software not be a
> battleground on which political or philosophical or business wars are waged.

It hasn't been my observation that recent discussions amoung proponents of 
open source software have been free of disagreement.  I admire the sentiment 
behind this comment, but it seems unlikely for the same reason that "Wouldn't 
it be nice if we all just got along?" is an impractical wish given 
sufficiently large numbers of people.

Building consensus is important, but it's rare that everybody will agree on, 
well, almost any topic one would care to name.  In particular, I'd disagree 
with the "field of endeavor" clause if it is to be applied to exclude software 
under a "free source but no-commercial-redistribution" license from being 
OSD-compliant.

-- 
-Chuck


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