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

[Isaac To]

>>>>> "Stephen" == Stephen J Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:

    Stephen> The consumer protection argument is the OSI line (a special
    Stephen> case thereof), and rms don't have much truck with anything so
    Stephen> economical and relativist.

If you think it that way, fire up Emacs, and type C-h C-p.  It clearly tells
you otherwise.  In particular, RMS acknowledge that at some time the
government should do something like copyright, giving a limited monopoly in
order to give economic incentive to work.  He just argued that software
development is not an area in which this is a correct approach---because, in
order to do that, the general public have to give up too much.

So I would characterize OSI and free software by their point of attack.  The
OSS group mainly attacks from the side of software producers, trying to
convince them that open-source produces better software for smaller cost.
Free software community attack it from the users' side, telling consumers to
understand that they are supposed to have the right to see whatever inside
the program, and that it is a very important right that they should not sign
anything to give it up.  The only catch here is that in the eyes of free
software advocates, developers are themselves users of their software and
software produced by others.  The battle line of free software is simply
longer than that of OSS.

Currently, the OSS point of attack seems more effective.  But I like the
free software line of attack much better.  Users must not be at the mercy of
producers.

Regards,
Isaac.