RE: [ba-ohs-talk] More bad news about the GPL License
There is a specific definition of "Open Source." It is at version 1.9 at
the moment, and found at (01)
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.html (02)
The statement is pretty simple. (03)
I would say that, in terms of material differences, it all revolves around
clause 3 on derivative works. An OSD-conforming license must *allow*
redistribution of derivative works under the same license. It is not a
requirement for OSD conformance that the license *require* redistribution of
derivative works under the same license, though it is not prevented from
doing so -- the GPL is listed as an OSD-conforming license, after all. (04)
A longer list of licenses that are approved as OSD-conforming is at (05)
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ (06)
The GPL and LGPL division appears to arise out of a difficulty on the
interpretation of "derivative work," and the prospect of broad
interpretations that would require users of a GPL library to consider their
work to be a derivative work under the GPL. Licenses that are more
permissive with regard to derivative works tend to make that particular
distinction irrelevant. (07)
I offer these observations to clarify the material differences among these
levels of OSD-conformant licenses. At this level, the free software license
model and OSD-conformant license model are not mutually exclusive (nor are
they co-extensive). (08)
The ethical question concerning preference for free software versus
OSD-compliant-but-non-free software is a matter for the originators of
software to deal with. It seems to me that there are a variety of ethical
stances that adopters of one license model or another might be honoring.
They can all be "ethical." I find that the stance articulated by Richard
Stallman is highly principled and worthy of serious consideration. I'm
impressed that the ethical justification of free software can be a practical
illustration of Kant's categorical imperative. That's a rare thing. (09)
-- Dennis (010)
Dennis E. Hamilton
AIIM DMware Technical Coordinator
------------------
mailto:dennis.hamilton@acm.org tel. +1-206-932-6970
http://www.dmware.org cel. +1-206-779-9430
ODMA Support http://ODMA.info/ (011)
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ba-ohs-talk@bootstrap.org
[mailto:owner-ba-ohs-talk@bootstrap.org]On Behalf Of John J. Deneen
Sent: Friday, April 26, 2002 14:14
To: ba-ohs-talk@bootstrap.org
Subject: Re: [ba-ohs-talk] More bad news about the GPL License:
Fwd:[Gxl] GCC Licencing and XML extracts (012)
Perhaps the February, 25 - 26, 2002 - Proceedings of the Open Source
Software Development Workshop in Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K. and the links
to Program Planning Discussion Forums will help?
< http://www.dirc.org.uk/events/ossdw/OSSDW-Proceedings-Final.pdf > (013)
I found the proceedings from the following clicks, which shows how each
forum allows for the posting of documents or Q&As or the establishment
of a collaborative "Chat", either spontaneous or scheduled.
< http://herbb.hanscom.af.mil/forums/aca-1/dispatch.exe? >
< http://herbb.hanscom.af.mil/forums/aca-1/dispatch.exe/techsol? > (014)
Richard Stallman wrote: (015)
> For the definition of "free software", see
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html. I presume that
> www.opensource.org gives the definition of "open source". (016)