On the point of attaching strings, I see a spectrum. Free Software is on one end. Moving away from that end are open source licenses with whatever strings attached there are. Sooner or later though, enough strings turn up that you cross over some boundary, out of open source territory. The question is where that boundary exists and should it be moved.
You can read a lot into the motivations of the authors of certain non-GPL (non-free) open source licenses when you isolate the so-called strings. I'm sure there were plenty of situations where totally free was simply not a choice. What do you do then? Say, OK, forget it. We're not going to bother open sourcing this at all?
So, we have 58 open source licenses. And now, maybe just like where totally free wasn't a choice back then, perhaps totally non-attributed in the user interface is the new non-choice.
Again, outside of what I think Mark Radcliffe needs to do, I don't want to get too prescriptive about the long term reconciliation of the delta between the two positions.
All I know is that hindsight is 20/20. Looking back is not going to help matters much. The question is, how do we move forward in a way that is as fair and equitable to all those involved and how do we continue to motivate others to engage in the sort of efficacy that Socialtext, SugarCRM, Scalix, and Zimbra have sworn themselves to.
David
Discussion on:
Message 6 of 1
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