[ILUG] email sent to politicians about Mary Hannafin'sdecisionnotto use open source

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Martin List-Petersen (martin+ilug at list-petersen.net):

> Define the key attribute of Open Source. That is actually a hard one,

No, it's not.

> because everybody sees a different meaning in what Open Source is.

No, there's really only one understanding of the term that makes sense.
It's the one I've cited, and is also the one scoped out by OSI's Open
Source Definition.

Read the Open Source Definition carefully.  It's a listing of details
that must attended to, in order to avoid substantively denying the right
to fork in arrangement that otherwise ostensibly grant it.  The core
right being protected thereby is stated in OSD #3, "Derived Works".

> Actually ... it is the freedom in itself, to just use Open Source the
> way you want.

Bullbleep.  This is a freedom that many _proprietary-software_ coders
can plausibly claim to grant.  The point of open source is that the
codebase is not _genuinely_ open unless the public is also granted the
legal right (and ability) to maintain the codebase independently and
release derivative works for any purpose.

> > Linux: Good, fast, AND cheap.
> 
> Good, fast, stable and not necessarily cheap, but you decide yourself
> what price you want to pay (in a certain extend.)

You must be desperately bored, if you're trying to debate people's
.signature blocks.  Sorry, I'm not going there.

-- 
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