[OT] What is Open Source? (was Re: ANN: Twisted 0.16.0...)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Huaiyu" == Huaiyu Zhu <huaiyu at gauss.almadan.ibm.com> writes:

    Huaiyu> I don't think it helpful at all to sacrifice the precision
    Huaiyu> of a term that is central to an argument in favor of
    Huaiyu> closeness to its everyday usage.

Well, that's the free/open source software argument in a nutshell,
isn't it.  Free software advocacy is implicitly limited to developers,
and then precision is important.[1]  Open source software advocates
are targeting the whole world, most of whom will never care enough to
be willing to learn precision.  If we don't talk to _them_ in everyday
usage, how can there be communication?

    Huaiyu> I still don't know if _you_ are using them as synonyms for
    Huaiyu> the same concept.

That's because the meaning varies by context.

Basically, when applied to licenses or programs, I consider them
synonyms because it's the same set of licenses and the same set of
programs.[2]

When applied to movements, the goals, or at least the emphases, are
rather different, and therefore the concepts denoted are different.




Footnotes: 
[1]  rms disagrees, of course.  He's right, in the sense that the
freedoms he talks about should morally apply to all human beings.  In
practice, though, only the developers will ever exercise the right,
and the rest realize that, and stop listening quite early on.

[2]  Of course the definitions are worded differently.  So when
referring to the definitions, they have to be different.

And I admit a slight theoretical possibility I could be wrong.  But go
look at the license lists---they're the same.  Except for the original
Perl "Artistic License", which is OSI-certified but in the "non-free"
group at GNU.  So look close---it's a technical DQ for being _too
vague_!  Ie, it's not that it's not free---it's that it's not really a
license according to the FSF.  The exception that proves the rule.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
              Don't ask how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.