[H-GEN] Well we no longer support free software!

Anthony Towns aj at humbug.org.au
Tue Feb 10 06:35:16 EST 1998


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Howard F Lowndes wrote:

> At 14:35 10/02/98 +1000, Andrae Muys wrote:
> >Rather we support Open Source Software! :)
>
> I might be being cynical, but "open source" could mean that you get the
> source as standard, but that there is a price for it.  Its just possible
> that someone might be looking for ROI.

Monetary cost is okay. The ``Free Software Community'' never had a
problem with that.

It's always been about being able to get at and modify the source. Now
sure, people could try to cash in on the OSS trend by giving source
away, but requiring a NDA (non-disclosure agreement -- "For Your Eyes
Only", sorta thing), or by having a restrictive license that says this
that and the other.

But technically, that wouldn't be _Open_ Source Software, just
software with source.

And since Bruce Perens (of Debian and Software in the Public
Interest), will apparently be applying for it as a trademark, we'll
have some recourse if random people claim to be distributing Open
Source Software when they're not.

(Oh, btw, for those of you who're running distributed.net clients, be
sure to select Software in the Public Interest as your preferred
recipient of any prize money distributed.net receives. And for those
of you who aren't, grab the distributed-net.deb from your local debian
mirror, or the appropriate .tar.gz or zip from
<http://www.distributed.net/des/>.)

Cheers,
aj

- --
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.

On Netscape GPLing their browser: ``How can you trust a browser that
ANYONE can hack? For the secure choice, choose Microsoft.''
	-- <oryx at pobox.com> in a comment on slashdot.org

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