svlug_pine_vs_open_source

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From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
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begin  Dagmar d'Surreal quotation:

> It's just not under an "open source" licence.  To most people, if the
> source code is freely available and you can use it, it's open source
> enough.

Let's see.  Ah, yes!

> Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0103050321550.273-100000@evil.dsurreal.org>


Well, it's more a question of what you trust to be maintainable in
the future.  (For this purpose, whether you _yourself_ are a code hacker
is quite irrelevant.)  U. of W. prohibits some of the key mechanisms by
which project continuity can be carried out, and therefore is classified
as proprietary.  See: http://www.washington.edu/pine/overview/legal.html 
for details.

Furthermore, U. of W. _even_ has attempted to retroactively weasel out
of the plain meaning of the free licence it used to use, through v.
3.91 -- maintaining that the public may freely distribute that code (as
the licence stated) and may freely modify it (as the licence stated),
but belatedly claiming that distributing _modified_ code is prohibited
(which the licence did _not_ say).  They threatened lawsuit against the
FSF, over the latter matter.

Rely on such people for your software if you really insist, but I sure
wouldn't.

More at:  http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#pine

And furthermore, pilgrim, if "open source" _isn't_ measured by the terms
of the Open Source Definition (http://www.opensource.org/osd.html), then
I submit that it becomes nothing but yet another crappy marketing term.
I don't know about you, but I don't intend to let that happen.

===

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