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Date:      Sun, 12 Sep 1999 22:40:20 -0500
From:      David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net>
To:        "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu>
Cc:        FreeBSd Chat list <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: New bind not completely open source... why GPL is not always best 
Message-ID:  <199909130340.WAA77139@nospam.hiwaay.net>
In-Reply-To: Message from "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu>  of "Sun, 12 Sep 1999 21:17:31 -0000." <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909122103360.9643-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu> 

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"Jason C. Wells" writes:
> >* Francisco Reyes (freyes@inch.com) [990912 04:44]:
> >>There is an article at Linux Weekly News http://www.lwn.net/ how BIND
> >>8.2 will have some code which although still free to distribute it will
> >>not meet %100 the definition of Open Source.
> 
> I read this brief on slashdot. What /. says is "does not meet the Free
> Software Definition of Debian."

What I gathered from the Debian position was "BIND does not meet the
anti-intellectual-property-ownership agenda as defined by Richard
Stallman."

IMHO there is a big difference between my definition of "Open Source" 
and the political agenda behind FSF and GPL. To be open source the 
product does not have to be freely redistributable, it simply means you 
are given a copy of the source code. One of the earliest examples of 
Open Source that I'm familiar with is the monitor PROM in my Apple //e. 
I paid all of $10 for the Genuine Apple book containing the assembly 
listing. It was quite helpful. In the 80 column text scroll routine it 
was quite obvious the author disabled interupts exactly the opposite of 
the way documentation said, and his comments said. By the time I 
looked, had figured that out for myself.

When the term "Open Source" popped up in the popular media a year or so 
ago, it meant something close to what I think of as Open Source. Today 
it has been bullied into something almost the mirror image of FSF.


--
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net
=====================================================================
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.




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