The Rails Wheels licencing system and Open Source

[Mark James]

David Woolley wrote:

> It's fundamental to open source that a recipient must be able to 
> redistribute without being required to pay anything to anyone and 
> without the recipient being required to pay anything to anyone, with the 
> exception that the person immediately supplying the copy may decline to 
> provide it without payment being made.  This only applies to the 
> copyright, although open source with patent encumbrances is generally 
> frowned upon and many people don't like Red Hat's trade mark 
> encumbrances, although, in that case, re-distributors can, and have, 
> removed the branding.

David, I agree that the spirit of (proper noun!) Open Source is
to require free and unrestricted re-distribution. Rails Wheels
packages can be freely redistributed, but there is a delayed
requirement to check whether a licence fee can or must be paid
to the software creators.