[sword-devel] Re: Re: Development Process

[Chris Little]

I was actually trying to be a bit ironic.  I wanted to point out that you 
were just being pedantic, without any real reason or need to be.  As 
surely as you pointed out that, under an overly pedantic interpretation, 
Troy's message had an error, I did the same with yours.  You replied, 
apparently not getting the irony, thinking you'd just correct me.  What's 
the point?  I don't think there is one.

Anyway, all rational readers should just click on the next message and 
quit reading this one.

--Chris


On Wed, 2 Jun 2004, Leandro Guimaraens Faria Corsetti Dutra wrote:

> Em Tue, 01 Jun 2004 10:28:42 -0700, Chris Little escreveu:
> 
> > You're probably confusing Free Software with Open Source Software.
> 
> 	I've been studying (so as to speak) this for quite a while,
> I'm pretty well sure of my ground here.
> 
> 	For reference, http://gnu.org./ and http://opensource.org./

This is not really borne out by the following statements.
 
> > Free Software is definitely about licensing.  Open Source Software just 
> > indicates that the source code is available.
> 
> 	No, that would be MS's and Sun's Shared Source.

No, shared source isn't open.  Source code isn't publicly available under 
shared source.  It is under open source.  But open source software could 
quite as easily have restrictive licensing (and fail the OSI's OSD).
 
> 	Open Source, while indicating deep philosophical differences,
> was originally but a marketing term for free software for suits.

Once it was defined, open source was intended as a disambiguation of the 
term 'free software'.
 
> > Open Source doesn't indicate you have any rights regarding the
> > software (i.e. some specified set of minimal license rights) other
> > than, presumably, the right to read the source.
> 
> 	No, the OSD is but DFSG repackaged.

Correct, but irrelevent.  See below.  My statement stands and remains 
correct.

> > (That ignores the whole OSI Open Source definition, since OSI
> > post-dates both the origination of Open Source Software as a concept
> > and as a term in wide use.)
> 
> 	Correct but irrelevant.  The term open source was coined by
> the same people who founded OSI and then adopted DFSG as the OSD.

Wrong.  The term open source was coined by Christine Peterson, President
of the Foresight Institute (http://www.foresight.org/), who did not found
the OSI, has no relation to the DFSG, and is not even, for that matter, a
programmer.  OSI adopted her term, sure, but don't pretend that they
invented it.  Even Christine Peterson can't claim to being the true
originator of this term since it has LONG been in use as a term referring
to any publicly available source of information, prototypically
newspapers.

> > I think, however, what Troy was probably alluding to metonymically,
> > was the development model associated with Open Source Software,
> > which I think everyone has a vague notion of.
> 
> 	But what I am arguing is that this association isn't
> necessarily true, and quite often wrong.  See GNU Emacs, XFree...

So?  The association isn't necessarily true, and quite often wrong, but 
overwhelmingly most frequently it is right.  Sorry to be nihilistic in the 
matter, but it really doesn't matter and no one cares.