Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 04:12:38 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <dyson@iquest.net> To: brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, jkh@zippy.cdrom.com, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: O'Reilly article: Whence the Source: Untangling the Open Source/Free Software Debate Message-ID: <199903130912.EAA01252@y.dyson.net> In-Reply-To: <4.1.19990312162726.03ff1c40@localhost> from Brett Glass at "Mar 12, 99 04:38:34 pm"
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Brett Glass said: > > >John Dyson is moving into the area of good non-GPL advocacy; I wish > >he'd pull the rug out from under them while pointing at the flying > >saucers a little more often, though. > > Perhaps John Dyson could be appointed the spokesperson on licensing > matters, if he's willing. (He's doing it already.) > No way. What we really need is a carefully constructed research paper on the various licensing terms, and the ramifications of each. I am not the right person to do that. After the creation of that paper, then we need to accumlate the text of each license, and create a magazine article, using the research paper and the license text (properly credited) as source material. The mag article would talk about the various aspects of software licensing in what is the traditional "free software" world. For example, a table would be created, describing in short and clear terms the freedoms (I hate that word) and limitations for each person in the foodchain, given several kinds license. The key to understanding the licenses is to be able to picture the flows of source code, binary, money, etc for each person in the pipeline. Also, it needs to be clarified what the predominant modes of profit are with each form of license, the ownership and control issues, and the relicensing issues. This would be an interesting undertaking, and I would be willing to provide information for some of a mag article, but am not willing (or able) to write it. I suspect that spending a few hours with a draw package, I could produce some interesting info about some of the licenses. (BTW, this wouldn't necessarily be PRO-BSDL, but would inform so that the right choice for a given situation could be made.) My whole thing about licenses isn't that any one license is the "right" one, but that people must make informed choices. It is a responsibility of those who have influence to provide information for the choices. The problem with this license thing is that there are too few people with that responsibility associated with noteriety, who are being open and straightforward enough to do proper justice to their userbase. -- John | Never try to teach a pig to sing, dyson@iquest.net | it makes one look stupid jdyson@nc.com | and it irritates the pig. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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