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

[Brad Bollenbach]

In article <GrAt8.11681$F43.8566 at atlpnn01.usenetserver.com>, Steve Holden wrote:
> "Brad Bollenbach" <bbollenbach at shaw.ca> wrote ...
>> Peter Olsen wrote:
>> > 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.
>>
>> This doesn't actually make sense. To call software "Open Source" is to
>> acknowledge it as being distributed under a license that is defined as
>> compatible with what Richard Stallman calls "Free Software". So you
>> don't have the "choice" of licensing Open Source software. It got to be
>> called "Open Source" *because* of the license you've already chosen for
>> it.
>>
> So the code I have put in the public domain isn't open source? That's
> interesting.

That's correct. 

To "put it into the public domain" the only thing that
is implicit is the fact that you hold the copyright. When you start
adding clauses like "feel free to modify and distribute it as you like",
etc. you've begun to establish it as Open Source (or "Free" depending on
whose terminology you're more interested in using). When you've attached
a license to it that is compatible with the GNU definition of "Free"
you've officially made it "Free Software" (or "Open Source",
again...depending on whose terminology you prefer to use to convey that
meaning).

For more, see:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Note the importance of actually attaching a Free Software license,
because, as Stallman says in the above link:

"In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be irrevocable as
long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the software has the
power to revoke the license, without your doing anything to give cause,
the software is not free."

So, if the "only" thing you've done is to "put in the public domain"
you've not made these rights real. When you release a piece of code with
a license though -- and one that is compatible with Open Source/Free
Software -- you *have* made these rights real, and thus, you've released
Open Source/Free Software.

>> And, FWIW, thinking that you're doing your users a favour by monitoring
>> who's using which version of what, and in what kind of environment
>> (commercial vs. non-commercial) is, at best, dependant on the types of
>> users, and, at worst, and absolutely disasterous idea. If they're
>> "end-user" types, you might legimitately be providing some capabilities
>> they want, but adopting this scheme for Open Source Hacker types will
>> just reduce your user-base by an order of magnitude or more.
>>
> I think you might have been taken in by a date-dependent (think "April 1"
> here) post that wasn't intended to be taken that seriously.

Not quite. :) 

I'm well aware that it was a joke. My comments make no mention of the 
Twisted development framework.


--
Brad Bollenbach