Arun, Sorry about my earlier email, I confused FSF with another group... here is my partly edited reply:
Hello Arun,
Great that you are thinking about developing open source software. Here are a few facts about your questions:
1. Nothing technically wrong with developing free software using commercial tools. Feel free to use Visual Basic / Windows / whatever you want. As a side note: Make sure your copies of Windows / Visual Basic, etc is all paid for ;)
2. The term you are looking for is "open source software", not "free software". Open Source means that the source code is available along with the software. The "source code" is "open". You may want to review details about GPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). To make your software "open source software" just release it under a license similar to GPL. You could write up your own set of "terms and conditions", but why replicate the efforts that went into the creation of GPL and other similar licenses?
3. Again, no problems using propritery software to develop open-source software. Just don't expose any internals of the "propritery" software.
A few points:
- You probably will be able to find an open source dictionary software. ASpell comes to mind. Good websites to start: http://www.sourceforge.net http://www.freshmeat.net Just go to these projects, use them, contribute source code to them.
- You would probably want other people (who use your software) to abide by your "terms and conditions". Philisophically, you should also respect and abide by "terms and conditions" aka. licenses, of the software you use. Have you read the license agreements of Windows and VB recently? Have they been paid for?
Recommended book: The Cathedral & the Bazaar, by Eric S. Raymond http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596001088/qid=1130647200/sr=8...
Ajay
--- arun t deostroll@yahoo.com wrote:
Ok, I know Windows is proprietary. I also know that Free Software is not about software in a philosophical sense...But my doubt for the time being is connected with software.
Ok, I want to develop a dictionary software; and I want to make it free software too. But I'll be developing this in Visual Basic. (It is proprietary software). Is there something technically wrong in doing so? For the software to be free I know I must publish code and allow others to make modifications, and warn others about not destroying my identity, right?
Suppose, along with this application I supply the source code and all the above-said terms and conditions then is not my software "free software" yet? Is there any problem using proprietary softwares to create free software?
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Ajay Gautam
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