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

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Tue Apr 30 08:30:13 EDT 2002


>>>>> "Huaiyu" == Huaiyu Zhu <huaiyu at gauss.almadan.ibm.com> writes:

    Huaiyu> If you stick to RMS's intent, you'll see that it is indeed
    Huaiyu> about consumer protection from the very beginning.  There
    Huaiyu> are plenty of evidence all over the net, from GNU, FSF and
    Huaiyu> RMS writings, and also summarized by several posters here.

I've read the writings.  Let's agree to disagree on interpretation; it
won't advance the technical discussion.

So, how about a tentative definition, then:

    _Consumer protection_ is a framework of regulation which places on
    the vendor, and possibly a third party, the responsibility for
    preventing certain kinds of damages to the consumer.

What I have in mind by "certain kinds of damages" are damages which
the vendor (or regulator) has a lot more power to prevent than the
consumer, due to information about the product, or access to
complementary technologies, or experience, or market power, for
example.  The reason for the "possible" third party is that in some
cases it makes sense to have a specialized regulator inspect the
products or transactions to be sure they're fair, eg in the case of
food or drug purity.  However, in some regimes (like the US with
medical malpractice), the burden of enforcement may be placed on the
consumer via a civil suit.  Laura's already cautioned me not to be
biased toward U.S. institutions, but I don't want to rule them out,
either.

This definition is tentative because it's biased against "free
software as consumer protection".  With this definition, it seems
natural to me to say "Free software exempts the vendor from the burden
of responsibility by shifting it back on the consumer," in some sense.
That doesn't sound like "protection" to me.  Can we fix that?  (I can
see and acknowledge my bias, but it's hard for me to work around it.)


-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN



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