I undertand all this and my own projects follow it or so I think. But if
you get too sanctimonious about it you'll just put off the folks that you
want to persuade in the long ru ( in which of course we're all dead).
Martin Mueller
Professor of English and Classics
Northwestern University
On 4/25/13 9:54 AM, "Neel Smith" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>It's not about cost (free = gratis).
>
>It's about freedom to use and build upon work (freedom = liberty).
>That's fundamental to scholarly work.
>
>
>
>On Apr 25, 2013, at 9:46 AM, Martin Mueller
><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I want to support Hugh's comments. There are many different ways of
>> bringing stuff to the public sometimes for money, sometimes for free,
>>and
>> sometimes for in between. Making a particular form of open source
>>license
>> a shibboleth is unlikely to further the cause of learning.
>>
>> Martin Mueller
>>
>> Professor of English and Classics
>> Northwestern University
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 4/25/13 8:40 AM, "Hugh Cayless" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Scot and I may disagree about URIs ;-), but I really don't have a
>>>problem
>>> with his use of the term "open source" here. The source is open. In
>>>other
>>> contexts I might want to be more rigorous about licensing, but
>>>publishing
>>> the code from a personal project that he might in the future want to
>>> charge for is nothing other than praiseworthy.
>>>
>>> My own reason for not liking CC for code licensing is that I'm not
>>> certain about how well it handles the distinction between plain text
>>>code
>>> and compiled executable. That may just be my own lack of careful
>>>reading
>>> though.
>>>
>>> Hugh
>>>
>>> On Apr 25, 2013, at 8:48 , Nick White <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 10:21:46PM +1000, Scot Mcphee wrote:
>>>>> I don't actually understand your point.
>>>>>
>>>>> I open source my code as a matter of policy; I've always done that.
>>>>
>>>> My point is that "open source" is a term which is widely understood
>>>> and agreed to have a specific meaning, namely that anyone can use
>>>> the code according to the criteria in the Open Source Definition.
>>>>
>>>> Your code is available to view and use, but with more restrictions
>>>> than people understand "open source" to mean. So calling it "open
>>>> source" is going to mislead people, as you mean something different
>>>> to how the term is generally used for software.
>>>>
>>>> As an aside, I recommend you read a bit more on the rationale for
>>>> why open and free software is important, and consider releasing your
>>>> code under a real open source license like ISC or the GPL.
>>>> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html is a good introduction.
|