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Don't imply that OSS/FS or GPL is always non-commercial.

From:  David Wheeler <dwheeler@ida.org>
To:  letters@lwn.net
Subject:  Don't imply that OSS/FS or GPL is always non-commercial.
Date:  Thu, 20 Feb 2003 13:20:30 -0500

In your last news issue you noted that Plone is "dual-licensed, it is
available under the GPL and a commercial license." I think you mean "under
the GPL and a license permitting use by proprietary software", or even
a "so-called commercial license".

Please, don't make the mistake of using text that implies that the
opposite of OSS/FS is "commercial" software, or you'll terribly confuse
many people.  Companies like Red Hat, IBM, MySQL, Zope, and so on are
clearly commercial companies who release OSS/FS programs in at least
certain situations. Red Hat routinely uses the GPL as a commercial license,
for example, yet it's a publicly traded commercial company.

In general, the opposite of "open source software/Free Software"
(OSS/FS) is "proprietary" or "closed" software.  Text that implies
that OSS/FS can't be commercial will confuse many.


--- David A. Wheeler





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