[ale] pigs do fly

[Tim Watts]

On Tuesday 21 July 2009 2:36:53 pm Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Jul 2009, Tim Watts wrote:
> > On Tuesday 21 July 2009 5:21:45 am Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> >> (most of MS'
> >> products are open source if you have enough money).
> >
> > Whoa! Surely you misspoke. Any basic definition of this term means that I
> > can freely access, modify and share the source code. Sure, I can get the
> > MS source with enough money, but I can't share it with anyone without
> > huge legal risks. I'm not sure I'd even be allowed to modify/build/deploy
> > it in my own company (i.e. they'll sell you the code for debugging
> > purposes only). How does that qualify as open source?
>
> No, I did not misspeak.  "Open source" and "free software" mean two very
> different things; all free software is open source, but the inverse is not
> true.  All open source means is that the source is available to someone to
> at least view; this is why one should say "free software" when that is what
> they mean, and if necessary additionally qualified with a reference to that
> definition.  I've heard people use "software libre" to say the same thing,
> less ambiguiously, which also works.

Agreed: open source and free software are not identical concepts. But I think 
your understanding of the term is not widely accepted. For instance, OSI (and 
I think most of that chunk of the world that gives a rat's ass about this sort 
of thing) understand it to mean something like this:

http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

So "source available" does not necessarily imply "open source". Additionally, 
open source is usually synonymous with a style of collaborative development 
open to public participation. These waters can get murky enough as it is 
without trying to put MS's "shared source" under the same umbrella.

The fact that MS will license access to some of their source for a hefty price 
does not make it worthy of the term Open Source as it is commonly understood 
-- not nearly so, IMHO.

>
>  	--- Mike
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Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
 -- Oscar Wilde