fsdaily.com — Motorola released their "open source" Service Availability Framework. However, The license of OpenSAF isn't really open source after all - it's a mixture of GPL and MPL, with extra parts aimed at making sure that essential freedoms are prevented. This article highlights in red and blue where Motorola's license comes from. Enjoy!
Jul 4, 2007 View in Crawl 4
chandonJul 5, 2007
Open Source is a term that was coined (and trademarked) by a specific group of people, who went on to form the OSI. Their definition of the term is widely accepted in the software field. Words have meanings, and in this case warping that meaning is either fraud or trademark infringement - depending on who complains about it.
Closed AccountJul 6, 2007
It is open source, it just doesnt fit the authors narrow view of what open source should be,The source, is open.
schestowitzJul 6, 2007
That's pretty funny!
fryguy1013Jul 6, 2007
I wouldn't have posted if the article headline was "Motorola's open source Service Availability Framework breaks GPL licensing" or something similar. I'm saying the zealots are claiming their own strict definition of open source, which excludes things which have open source. I'm saying that their redefinition is overly strict. To them, anything that's not FLOSS isn't open source. FLOSS is definitely open source, however things which aren't FLOSS are open source as well. It would be like saying that Shasta Cola is a great cola.. then a cola zealot comes and says "No, that's not a cola. Only Coke is a cola."I'll quote something from GNU (<a class="user" href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html):">http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html):</a>"However, the obvious meaning for the expression “open source software” is “You can look at the source code.” This is a much weaker criterion than free software; it includes free software, but also includes semi-free programs such as Xv, and even some proprietary programs, including Qt under its original license (before the QPL).That obvious meaning for “open source” is not the meaning that its advocates intend. The result is that most people misunderstand what those advocates are advocating."I did read the article and do understand the point of it, even though it doesn't completely support what I'm saying. I am just angry about how open source zealots have bastardized this word and say that anything that they believe isn't "good enough" to be what they believe is open source.It's equal to my angriness over how GPL zealots believe that GPL is more free than other licenses, even though it is more restrictive. I'm not saying that it is worse per se, just that more restrictive is not the same as having more freedoms. Specifically, how GPLv2 allows consumers of free software to reuse it, but intermix code that has patents, yet GPLv3 does not allow consumers to do this. I got dugg down a lot for that comment as well. I understand that the idea is that the producers of the original code have more freedom to reuse consumed code, but really that isn't a freedom. I could have a different license that said consumers cannot redistribute code, and any modifications require sending the changes to the original developer. That would have a lot of freedom for the original developer, but not a lot for the consumer, and definitely would be less "free," don't you think?