[LUAU] the term "open source" is dead, says Eben Moglen

[Jimen Ching]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2006, Dave Burns wrote:
> This is all too metaphorical for me, I don't understand what people think is
> going on. I am not sure what it would mean for "open source" to be dead or
> why I should even care.

First of all, "open source" isn't dead.  The subject line says: "the term 
'open source' is dead".  THE TERM.

Who should care?  Only those who used it as a synonym for 'free software'. 
If you don't care about open source before, you're not going care now.

But for communities like Debian, where terms like these determine whether 
a piece of software is included or not, what the term means is very 
important.  But not every distribution is so anal about such issues.  I.e. 
Ubuntu is based on Debian, but it's more flexible about patents and 
proprietary drivers.  So Ubuntu wouldn't care if the _term_ 'open source' 
is dead, because they didn't care before when it was alive.  But Debian 
cares, and for good reason.

People often don't care about the rights they have.  Not until someone 
takes it away.  Stallman didn't care about the right to share software 
either.  Until someone told him he couldn't...

YOU don't NEED to care.  A lot of people don't NEED to care.  As long as 
there are people who do care and are willing to fight for those rights. 
You'll continue to enjoy the benefits.  That's how it worked in the past. 
That's how it's going to work in the future.  What you're seeing now is 
just the process...

--jc
-- 
Jimen Ching (WH6BRR)      jching at flex.com     wh6brr at uhm.ampr.org