[Linux-aus] Who defines Open Source?

[Paul Shirren]

Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> On Wednesday,  8 February 2006 at  8:42:24 +0800, Senectus . wrote:
>> On 2/8/06, Leon Brooks <leon-linuxaus at cyberknights.com.au> wrote:
>>> On Wednesday 08 February 2006 07:53, Paul Shirren wrote:
>>>> while Free Software qualifies as Open Source, Open Source is
>>> [not]
>>>
>>>> necessarily Free Software.
>>> Cheers; Leon
> 
> I shouldn't get involved in this argument, and I'll try to keep away.
> But this is exactly why I don't like the term "Open Source".  Ask the
> man in the street what it means, without specifying context, and he'll
> generally have little idea.  Ask him what "free software" means and
> he'll have a pretty good idea.
> 

Thanks Leon for correcting my typo. I always seem to drop words in editing.

I like your faith in the common man Greg. Unfortunately the man on the 
street around here thinks pirated software is free. He thinks shareware 
is free and really good stuff, especially when it lets him get free 
movies and songs. He does know that open sauce should be stored in the 
fridge, but only because his mum told him off for leaving it out.

To a large extent, what counts is what ships in distros, and what 
attracts a development community. Meeting the DFSG, or just adopting one 
of the main 3 licenses (GPL, LGPL, MIT) is a less risk than a DIY 
license I think.