On Wednesday, November 6, 2002, at 07:58 AM, St�phane Croisier wrote:
This is definitely a problem we as a software industry need to clarify. The way I see it, there's Open Source, Free Software, Shared Source, and Proprietary, but these terms don't encompass the different scenarios well enough.
Great definition Jay... I would love that others "free software" fanatics also share your point of view. The open source community has really to learn to differenciate 1) the rights of getting an access to the source code or being able to redistribute it and 2) the rights of using it. This is two things completely different. However due to the current mix open source = free software, this leads to a lot of confusion in the marketplace. Quite a shame for all the softwares that has available source code and that are still considered as "proprietary" by certain analysts or GPL/BSD gurus !
The first two are essentially the same, with a difference in philosophy/motivation (Open Source was coined to avoid the double-meaning of Free in the English language, the GPL dudes don't like that).
The third has a stigma about it because it's used by Microsoft to say "You can see our source, but you can't make any use of it, and we can stick it to in court you if we find out that you created something we could claim was derived from our Shared Source software."
The fourth essentially encompasses the latter two.
My software is written in PHP. While there are "encoders" (aka compilers) available now for PHP, one of the benefits my customers get is being able to see our source. No they can't redistribute it, but they can modify it to suit their needs. This has been a blessing and a curse. Many potential clients wouldn't even talk to us if they couldn't see the source, but we're getting listed on free software sites and now have people assuming it's free software (it's available for download for evaluation purposes, so they just keep it and don't pay).
While there are ways of avoiding some of these issues (we're only allowing betas to be downloaded for free soon), the issue could be avoided through more effective terminology (notice how vague the entire CMS industry is ;)). Avoiding the issue entirely would also save us time (read: money) pursuing sales leads that are just looking for something for free.
Any ideas for a better word? I would personally like to see Open Source not have such an emphasis on Free and redistribution rights, because otherwise it would be a great term for my case. How about "View Source"? ;)).
Cheers,
Lux
--
http://cms-list.org/
trim your replies for good karma.
