2008/12/30 Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org:
none of these 'definitions' define FOSS. They just lay down the criteria that *must* be fulfilled for a project to be considered FOSS. Minimum criteria.
So are you telling that Virtual Box, QT, Open Office, MySQL fails this minimum criteria?
But FOSS is something much more than that. To different people it is an ideology, a methodology, a religion and even, surprise, surprise, a mass movement. I am a methodology guy and hence focus on that - and I have no plans of changing the nomenclature. To me, FOSS methodology (or the FOSS development model) is the most important aspect. License is a minor aspect.
OK. No problems with that. But just look at the example of Open Office. Sun distributes proprietary Star Office and ownership of any contribution to Open Office must be shared with Sun. Now some people did not want to do that and there is http://go-oo.org/
Where do you stand with respect to Open Office?
License is th enabler for the development methodology. If you don't like the model fork. That is what happened with Open Office, Sourceforge (gforge) ...
And the extent to which the FOSS development model is used is usually directly proportional to the quality of the software and its responsiveness to the needs of the users - and I personally use FOSS software because of it's quality and its responsiveness to the needs of the users. And as far as possible keep away from dual licensed stuff and other stuff of dubious provenance.
Are you telling Open Office, QT, MySQL are of lower quality because they are under dual license?
- Praveen