[License-discuss] Making the PHP FAQ generic

[Richard Fontana]

On Fri, Dec 07, 2012 at 01:07:23PM -0600, Karl Fogel wrote:
> Also, it might good to talk about implementations of languages being
> open source, rather than the languages themselves.  It's a bit pedantic,
> but I think it can be worded naturally, and it would emphasize the
> conceptual cut one has to make to really understand the answer.  If you
> compile your C program with Borland's C compiler, that doesn't make your
> program closed-source; by the same token, if you run your Python program
> on the most widely-used implementation of Python, which is open source,
> that doesn't make your code open source by default.
> 
> People who ask that question may think they're asking about the
> language, but they're really asking about the particular language
> implementation.  This should be made clear to them in the answer.

+1. I encounter a surprising amount of confusion about this point.

 - Richard