ANN: Twisted 0.16.0: Licenses and Open Source don't conflict.

[Peter Olsen]

Itamar Shtull-Trauring <twisted at itamarst.org> wrote in message news:<mailman.1017656355.5887.python-list at python.org>...

> "Software pirates not only steal from the companies that make the software,
> but with less money for research and development of new software, all users
> are hurt.  That's why all software piracy - even one copy you make for a
> friend, is illegal."
> 
> Software piracy is a serious crime, and one that the Open Source community
> has been remarkably lax in pursuing and protecting against.  This is why
> Twisted Matrix Laboratories is taking the forefront in Open Source software
> registration technology.
> 
> In order to do your part to prevent the tragedy of unregistered, unlicensed
> software, all you need to do is go to http://www.twistedmatrix.com/license
> and enter your user information to obtain a license key.  You can provide us
> with as much or as little information as you like!
> 
> For more information on how Twisted helps you run licensed, unpirated
> Open-Source software, visit:
> http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/howto/register
> 
...
> 
> For more information, visit http://www.twistedmatrix.com, or join the list
> at http://twistedmatrix.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/twisted-python

While the small amount of software I have written has been release 
under terms more liberal than those of the GPL (and the license
appears to have disappeared), I see absolutely no conflict between 
"Open Source" and software licensing, indeed, I don't think I see
much conflict between licensing and the GPL.

There are lots of good reasons to license open source software.

I might want to know who was using a binary distribution (perhaps in 
a commercial environment).  I might want make sure that users had 
the latest and most-bug-free version. I might want to insure that
people without the skill to review the source and compile it for
themselves weren't getting binaries munged by some middleman.

I even think that these uses might be laudable.  

I have seen several packages with license terms stating that 
users could not further distribute the program, but that it 
was freely available from the author's website.  What's wrong
that?

I have also seen cases in which a buggy early version of a program
was much more widely distributed than a later, bug-free one.  I like
to think that the code I write today is better than the code I wrote
years ago --- and I'd just as soon not have my reputation rest on 
the code I wrote back then.

What's wrong with addressing those problems with a license that 
prohibits users from further distributing either binary or
source code while making them both freely available from the
author's website?

Eric Raymond has written that one of the motivations for building
Open Source software is to gain the satisfaction of public 
accomplishment.  What better way to know that your accomplishment
is recognized than to count the number of people who took the time
to register their use of it?

I think that, for my purposes, licensing is not worth my effort or
my users' time.  But if you want to license your Open Source software,
be my guest.

Peter Olsen, P.E, Ae.E.
pc_olsen at yahoo.com