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

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Brad" == Brad Bollenbach <bbollenbach at shaw.ca> writes:

    Brad> You misread, or misunderstood (or both) what I said. It's
    Brad> not "optional" to license Open Source/Free Software. It got
    Brad> to be *called* Open Source/Free _because_ of the license you
    Brad> chose for it.

I'd put it slightly differently: it can _only_ be called OSS/FS if you
apply a free license to it.

    Brad> If you have a piece of software with no license whatsoever
    Brad> attached to it, it's not proprietary, open source/free,
    Brad> shareware, "freeware", or whatever.

Wrong, at least in the U.S.  It's proprietary, because all rights are
implicitly reserved to the copyright holder.  Rick Moen says it better
than I can: http://www.linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#djb.


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