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

[Clark C . Evans]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2002 at 04:32:15PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
| rms's fundamental position is radical: property rights in software are
| morally wrong.  Unfortunately, even rms himself seems incapable of
| behaving in a way consonant with this belief.  (Ie, he clearly
| believes that he has a special right to manage development of projects
| he has initiated, such as Emacs, gcc, or glibc.

There is a difference between "trademark" and "copyright".  RMS firmly
believes in trademarks; and he believes that he has a special right to
manage development of projects (named by a trademark) he has initiated.
RMS has _never_ said that you couldn't take the code and make your 
own fork... *calling it something else*, like XEmacs.  He may frown upon
it since forks in some cases waste effort; but this is a different issue
entirely.  This makes sence.  People have come to know "emacs" as having
a particular flavor and quality, and this flavor and quality is a product
of Stallman's vision for Emacs.  There is nothing wrong with this, as it
does not hurt your ability to fork the code and do-as-you-please.  Not that
you have to believe in RMS's vision, but please don't mis-represent what
he stands for... 

Best,

Clark