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US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet (The Register)

Posted Jun 12, 2012 23:34 UTC (Tue) by Baylink (subscriber, #755)
In reply to: US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet (The Register) by dlang
Parent article: US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet (The Register)

In short, if you believe that the un-noticed use by a third party of your code for a use you don't approve of messes up your karma, then you're taking precisely the approach you should take: make sure your code it released under licences that permit you to impose field-of-use restrictions.

If that means that you must release it under a license which causes people not to want to use it as much, that's the price you pay.

It is my understanding that due diligence was put into whether field-of-use restrictions should be allowed into licenses under the OSI definition, but you could always check with ESR; he was there.

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US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet (The Register)

Posted Jun 13, 2012 20:15 UTC (Wed) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

> It is my understanding that due diligence was put into whether field-of-use restrictions should be allowed into licenses under the OSI definition, but you could always check with ESR; he was there.

I could not parse this sentence. Help?

anyway, for reference, OSD clause #6:

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.

US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet (The Register)

Posted Jun 15, 2012 2:57 UTC (Fri) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

"As far as I know, the people who decided what the OSI description of a valid "Open Source" license should look like exercised due diligence over whether field-of-use restrictions should disqualify a license from the definition, but if you want to know more about the depth of those discussions, Eric Raymond isn't hard to find to ask about it."

US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet (The Register)

Posted Jun 15, 2012 12:17 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

Thank you! (not a native to English language)

And yes, they exercised a lot of due diligence -- I am old enough to remember the discussions that lead to the OSI OSD and to the DFSG and associated Desert Island, Dissident, and Tentacles of Evil tests.