Re: [OSCOM] OSCOM, OSI, open source, free software (was: ANN: Magnolia 3.0...)

Robin Millette wrote:

> The OSI is not very limiting in my opinion. Last count, it showed a
> total of over 50 approved licences, GPL and BSD included.

Exactly! That proves my point. The fact that you give a number of
licenses shows that it IS limited to the number approved by this
organization.

> The accepted definition of open source means more then access to
> source. It's also a condition to be able to redistribute changes to
> the source, just as with free software.

Accepted, by whom? I have used other open source software that did not
fall under the OSI definition. I am not limited to that definition of
"open source" and, obviously, many other people aren't either. There was
a good article in Linux Journal a few years ago that outlined this.

> Some projects are dual licenced, such as MySQL. It's up to the rights
> holder to pick a licence to distribute his work.

And that is exactly what I was saying. Even OSI is very clear that they
are not a legal entity which means their reviews are not legally
binding. I wouldn't base by business model on someone else's opinion of
what open source means.

Michelle