> With an open license, a project only needs to reach "critical mass" in order
Minor nit pick but an 'open' license doesnt prevent people from stealing
things away. For sometime IBM gave source code to those that purchased
their hardware/software, just as Microsoft gives source now to certain
partners under its 'shared source' agreements.
With out explicit freedoms that allow you to 'modify' and/or 'distribute'
the source code you are just as powerless as a proprietary software
customer, even though you are perhaps more informed (in that you can see
the code)
I simply point this out because one can have the source code to an
application but without the freedom it means nothing they are still
chained as a slave to the distributor. So that means that because
something is Open one can not deduce automatically that there is freedom
associated with it. However, by stating something is Free Software you
can reasonable deduce that if you have the freedom to modify/distribute
that you indeed must have the right to see it. :)
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