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

[Isaac To]

>>>>> "Stephen" == Stephen J Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:

    Stephen> The consumer protection argument is the OSI line (a special
    Stephen> case thereof), and rms don't have much truck with anything so
    Stephen> economical and relativist.

If you think it that way, look at the GNU manifesto, which can be found on
the web at http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html.  It clearly tells you
otherwise.  Here are some quotes...

   All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by society
   because it was thought, rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole would
   benefit by granting them.  But in any particular situation, we have to
   ask: are we really better off granting such license?  What kind of act
   are we licensing a person to do?

   The case of programs today is very different from that of books a hundred
   years ago.  The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from one
   neighbor to another, the fact that a program has both source code and
   object code which are distinct, and the fact that a program is used
   rather than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situation in which a
   person who enforces a copyright is harming society as a whole both
   materially and spiritually; in which a person should not do so regardless
   of whether the law enables him to.

In particular, RMS acknowledge that at some time the government should do
something like copyright, giving a limited monopoly in order to give
economic incentive to work.  He just argued that software development is not
an area in which this is a correct approach---because, in order to do that,
the general public have to give up too much.

So I would characterize OSI and free software by their point of attack.  The
OSS group mainly attacks from the side of software producers, trying to
convince them that open-source produces better software for smaller cost.
Free software community attack it from the users' side, telling consumers to
understand that they are supposed to have the right to see whatever inside
the program, and that it is a very important right that they should not sign
anything to give it up.  The only catch here is that in the eyes of free
software advocates, developers are themselves users of their software and
software produced by others.  The battle line of free software is simply
longer than that of OSS.

Currently, the OSS point of attack seems more effective.  But I like the
free software line of attack much better.  Users must not be at the mercy of
producers.

Regards,
Isaac.