NPO

[Derek A. Neighbors]

> As I said, I prefer Free Software. I do, however, see merit in the Open
> Source ideas as well. In an ideal world we'd have guarantees of the
> freedoms inherent in Free Software. The world's never been ideal for
> me. Others may have had other experiences with it :).

If you look at something like SourceForge you will 
like 90%+ of the software there is free software. 
I would venture to say if you are running 
GNU\Linux probably 85%+ if not more of the 
software you are running is under a free license.

> The problems I've heard mentioned are more from the perspective of to what
> extent the source code needs to be made available. Could be
> misunderstandings on our part.

I think the mis understanding is that you believe 
the GPL is the ONLY free license and this is NOT 
the case.  This is part of the problem with 
terming things Open Source.  Many licenses that 
are free are now considered 'open source' licenses 
when in reality they are really free.  I will 
admit FSF has done been bad about this by 
lambasting not acceptably free licenses that the 
OSI has approved and thus created a divide.

Even Bruce Perens one of the original founders of 
Debian and OSI understands that wonders at times 
whether branching from Free was the right movement.


> I think the issue I heard most recently was something like a consultant or
> a company working on GPLd code for another company. Do the changes then,
> due to the GPL, need to be made available to the public at large or only
> to the company who will be receiving the code? I heard that the 3rd
> edition of the GPL was trying to move to an explicit case where all GPLd
> code has to be available to everyone.

There are parts of the GPL that are 'vague'.  Like 
what constitutes distribution (which would be the 
problem in your example above) (ie did the 
consultant write something this distribute it to 
the company or was he an extension of the company)

There are also issues similar when it comes down 
to defining 'linking'.  (ex: if i write an CORBA 
enabled app can prop apps connect to it via CORBA 
and use it?  currently common answer is yes, but 
some people dont like that)

The GNU GPL v3 will address both of these concerns.

> Personally, I think source only needs to be available to the entity using
> it. It doesn't need to go to the public if it's internal changes ( though
> that should be highly encouraged :). It doesn't even need to be available
> to the individual workers within the entity, though that would be cool.

Each has thier own opinion on such matters.

> I am willing to be swayed on this if the proper reasoning is presented :).

I agree Free Software can be hard for suits to 
understand, but so is Open Source.  So what it 
boils down to is educating them once you have 
thier attenion.  I think it is a lot smarter for 
one to use Free from the start as after the 
education process they will more likely get it.

Derek Neighbors
derek@gnu.org