What is open source?

What is open source?

Posted Nov 30, 2006 15:14 UTC (Thu) by ber (subscriber, #2142)
Parent article: What is open source?

By definition "Open Source" is a different word for Free Software, see the OSI FAQ about it. So the question can be rephrased as What is Free Software? The four freedoms are a very good approach to discuss if something is Free Software or not. Most important is to educate people about this, so they can make up their mind about a specific software themselfs. A trademark will not be as helpful as people that understood more about it.

Note that the invariant section possibility in the GFDL came to be because the legal world does treat text and literature different from software and source code. Beside texts are differently used. So it is not clear, what freedoms somebody would usually demand from a text and how to best legally secure this. Thus the comparision of invariant sections in the GFDL license to the software problem of SugarCRM is not the best in my view. It works in the way that it shows what practical problems might be introduced; it is confusion from the licensing point of view.

---

(Log in to post comments)