What is involved in an "Open Standard" truly being so?

Luke -Jr luke at dashjr.org
Wed Nov 14 19:16:35 CST 2007


On Wednesday 14 November 2007, djgoku wrote:
> On Oct 31, 2007 12:41 PM, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:
> > On Wednesday 31 October 2007, Oren Beck wrote:
> > > Open Standard.
> > >
> > > 2 words that are being abused or distorted..
> > > Either singly or as a "self qualifying " term.
> > >
> > > Open means what it says and says what it means.
> >
> > Actually, "Open" in "Open Source" is distorted. All it *really* implies
> > is that the code is available. It does not imply that you have the legal
> > "right" to redistribute it, modified or not. Hence why "Free software"
> > not only predates "open source", but is more accurate given the correct
> > definition of "free" (which is different from "free of charge", even if
> > the latter is incorrectly abbreviated as "free" often).
>
> GPL is Free of Charge, and open source. GPL is in no way _free_.
>
> BSD variants/Public Domain is Free as in free to do what you want, and
> open source.

GPL is free enough.

BSD is "too" free in that it gives you the ability to be a jerk.
Nor is it necessarily open source-- someone could easily license a binary 
under the BSD license.


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